Boku no na ha?
by Worosei
Summary: This is my 'sequel' to Kimi no na ha. It picks up from the end of the movie and is a light-novel length continuation from the movie with its own plot and resolution. Please leave a review or give feedback. Taki and Mitsuha are drawn to each other, but with their memories gone, can a relationship bloom? Where are their memories? What is the kataware? Are the effects of Tiamet over?
1. Chapter 1

Author note: The majority of this chapter is a sort of 'prologue', re-living the end of the movie.

* * *

CHAPTER 1: Taki

That face!

I was jerked out of my daily morning commuting stupor as I felt my heart strings being tugged violently. Tugged by a subway carriage travelling the opposite direction from me. Pulling against my body with a combined speed differential of 90 kilometres per hours. Tugging me to what I had been searching for. The _person_ I was searching for.

 _Get off at the next stop._

I don't know why, maybe it was the look in the girl's eyes, or the sudden turbulence in my heart, but I had to get off at the next stop. I had to find that person. I had just passed the _San-Chome_ stop for Yotsuya and was soon approaching the main Yotsuya station. I calculated that the stations were about one kilometre apart or roughly eight minutes if I moved quickly.

I ran.

Out the doors, through the gates, into the open and now sunny day. As if moving only on instinct, I raced to the left. Get to _san-chome_ I told myself. As I sprinted over the overpass, I thought to myself that I really should have turned right instead turning left, and taken Shinjuku road as it would have been faster.

I kept going though, deciding to take the Suga Shrine route. That would be the fastest way now. My heart beating, my lungs burning, I kept running till I reached the base of the shrine steps. And then stopped.

I looked up and saw her. She looked back at me.

I somehow felt a lack of surprise at seeing her. As if I knew she was going to be here. She was beautiful. I was mesmerised.

After what felt like ages, I managed to turn my eyes away from her, averting myself from staring creepily at her. I don't want to seem weird, I told myself. Especially to a sempai I had never met before. I slowly moved up the stairs. Focusing on calming my breathing, trying to slow my heart.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

It wouldn't slow. As I took each step, one by one, trying to walk as naturally as possible.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I couldn't hear the sound of my footsteps through the beating of my heartbeat. It seemed that she was moving the same way as me; slowly walking down the stairs, trying to look natural, interested in the other person, but afraid of coming across as awkward... We both continued along our deafeningly silent journey along the stairs until I reached the end of the staircase. I stopped, turned around, and looked back at her.

"Ummm…" I stammer out. I have to find out.

"I… uhh…have I... have we...somewhere...met before?" I blurt out, jumbling my words all together.

She stopped and looked back at me, slowly comprehending my words. I slowly see tears welling in her eyes.

"I thought so too," she finally says.

We look at each other for what seems like an eternity.

"What is your name?" we both blurt out at the same time. We stop for a moment then both let out a small laugh, grateful that the awkward silence that had been permeating for a while now had been broken.

"I'm sorry," I say, remembering my manners, "this may sound really strange, but I feel like we have met somewhere before. Could you please tell me your name?"

"Mitsuha," she replied, "uh...Miyamizu, Mitsuha," she says again as she remembers to use her family name.

"I feel like I know you too. Would it be alright if you told me your name?"

"Tachinabana Taki," I manage to voice out, saying my name.

Mitsuha, I mouth to myself. When I look at her, it seems so natural that that's what her name would be; 'of course' she's Mitsuha, what else would she be called?

"I don't know why I came here", I hear her voice pipes up, "I was meant to be meeting my friends but I…" her voice drifted off.

"I felt the same," I reply, "I just had to come here too… It's nice to meet you."

Mitsuha laughs again. Her laugh is cute. "Nice to meet you too, "she replies.

It feels so surreal. I am speechless, what do I say?

"This may sound strange," Mitsuha ventures, "but if it is alright with you…do you want to grab a coffee?" she invites me.

I look back at her as I feel my heart leap for joy. I want to scream out 'definitely', but I pause and consult my inner self; what's the right way to respond here? Aside from Okudera-sempai, I have always been terrible talking to girls. And even then, it took me a long time since I could speak with Okudera-sempai normally. I don't want to sound too eager, but not uninterested…

Mitsuha fiddles with her mobile phone that has somehow crept up to her hand. I realise that I have been leaving her hanging, waiting for a response. I feel my face become warm in nervousness.

As I find my voice, I hear her say,"uhh…. my boyfriend will meet us...me…later too."

I feel my heart pause, boyfriend?

"So you don't have to worry about misunderstanding or anything ummm…"

As I hear those words, I feel as if everything around me is distorted and warping.

"I just thought that since we've both missed our trains now… we could at least have a coffee…" Mitsuha finishes speaking, "or maybe try to work out why we both got off the train…."

I swallow, "ok… sounds good," I manage to say, " lets do that…."

Inside my head however, was my head irrationally yelling out in disappointment that SHE HAS A BOYFRIEND!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Taki

"I don't think I've been in this area too much, do you know any cafe's around here?" Mitsuha asks me whether I know any cafes in the area.

I think about the question as I calm my thoughts and come back to my senses.

"If not, I'll look one up on Tabelog", she says as she pulls out her phone searching for the phone app. "I don't know how many years are needed, but I still feel like I haven't been in Tokyo for very long..." she peters off.

"I think Tokyo's always changing, so I don't know if anyone can really feel 'used' to it," I reply.

"Perhaps if we go to the san-chome station, we could go to either Gusto or Saizeria, which I know is over there."

Mitsuha laughs at me, "how long I have been out of university for?" she asks, "only a college student, or NEET would recommend a family restaurant to a girl," she teases me.

I get embarrassed and try mumble some clarification, "I've already graduated... though I'm still job hunting... and I'm only suggesting those places as there's not much around this area...and they aren't that bad to be able to sit at and..." I feel tongue tired, not knowing what to say.

"I know more cafes in the Shinjuku area…" I feebly resign and say, steering the conversation away.

She laughs at me again, "when I was younger, I was so in love with Tokyo. I lived out in the countryside and we had no cafes or anywhere stylish. The only thing I wanted to do was visit a stylish cafe... "

Trying to take some initiative I quickly interject, "Les go to Shinjuku then, I know more cafes there. Or even Roppongi Hills..." I blurt out.

Mitsuha chuckles again, "oh man, I can't remember why, but somehow Roppongi Hills sounds so familiar... anyways," she shakes her head, "I'm out of a job too. No one seems to like employing a country-side girl like me, so a cheaper place like Gusto is perfect. I was so excited the first time I went to one, plus, I have some drink coupons for there in my purse still."

I laugh, "I have some too" pulling my wallet out and showing her the coupons.

We both laugh. Perhaps we do have similarities.

We make our way towards the café, engaging in slightly muted conversation. We discuss the weather, our hobbies (we both like the band the Radwimps it seems), our favourite shrine in this area… Silently I decide that Suwa Shrine is now my favourite spot.

The conversation feels natural and awkward at the same time. I think it has been a while since I've spoken at any lengths with a girl before. The last times were with an old colleague of mine, though that relationship felt much more of the kohai/sempai relationship of her giving me her wisdom advice. At least it felt that way to me as for some reason back when I was part-timing, she started approaching me to talk and invite me to coffee or drinks afterwards. Girl's are mysterious though.

"I reckon you like basketball", Mitsuha guesses correctly as she speaks to me. She is quite an upbeat and energetic sort of person.

"I reckon you're probably doing some sort of design or textile work", I guess correctly about Mitsuha. She just seemed that sort of person to me.

It feels like I already know so much about her, and she knows so much about me. Why am I so drawn to her? Is it a romantic connection, I wonder, perhaps I'm reading too much into it as she has already stated that she has a boyfriend.

As we walk and chat, my mind screams out the questions I really want to ask her instead;

 _"Why do you look so familiar?"_

 _"Why do I feel like I know exactly what you are going to say?"_

 _"Why am I so drawn to you?"_

Maybe it's not a soulmate I was looking for. Maybe we have some weird connection in a past life? Or perhaps siblings separated since young? I recalled a story my friend Shinta was telling me; it was of a pair of twins who had been separated at birth in England. When they had grown up, they had bumped into each other randomly and felt a connection with each other. The two twins thought that connection was a romantic one, so they got married. Eventually they got a DNA test and they discovered that they were actually siblings. I shudder thinking about that; their connection they felt with each other was actually a sibling-bond rather than a proper romantic one. It would be terrible if I misdiagnose the connection I have with Mitsuha.

I shake the thought from my head.

Mitsuha, looking up from her phone which she has been tapping on, cocks her head and gives me a quizzical glance, "what's with the weird face?" she asks.

"Twins…" I somehow end up muttering still daydreaming about what Shinta told me.

"Huh?" Mitsuha looks at me, slightly bemused "twins as in you have a sibling twin? or that you want to buy the new kit-kat twin pack? or are you into twin-tails haircuts on girls and are a manga otaku?", she teases me.

I turn red, "no… I don't read much manga... I was just thinking about a story a friend told me about twins… I was daydreaming a bit… say, do you have any siblings?" I ask trying to change the focus away from me again.

Mitsuha lets me off, "yeah, I have a younger sister," as she begins talking about her sister as we continue walking.

Her sister was going into her final year of high school, and thinking about universities.

"What high school is your sister in?" I ask as we approach the entrance of the Gusto.

"Yotsuha goes to school in Gifu, she's still working out what entrance exams to apply for, for university. I'm encouraging her to come to Tokyo as there's more choices here. Grandmother however wanted her to continue on looking after the shrine... even though it's gone now... But I guess it's whatever you want and wherever you can get into right?" Mitsuha continues.

The Gusto entrance doorbell ring as we walk through and are greeted by a waiter.

"Welcome, how many people do you have? Would you prefer smoking or non-smoking seats?" the waiter asks us politely.

Mitsuha gestures to the waiter for four people and states "no smoking". She pauses and looks at me, "sorry, I just assumed you don't smoke..."

I confirm her assumption, "I don't like smoking, plus it's not good for your health. So I'm happy to hold off on the smoking and breathing in of smoke until I'm forced to by a future boss or manager," I tell her. It's a good thing that Japanese society is slowly being educated on the dangers of cigarette smoking, but it's still a difficult thing to refuse an elder if they offer or expect you to smoke with them.

We're brought to our table and are given two menus to look at.

"Parfait!" Mitsuha immediately calls out, before the waitress showing us the table could escape.

"And the cheese cake too", she adds.

I don't have time to look at the menu and only roughly remember what they sell here. That, and it's still only 10:30am in the morning, I just order a coffee.

"Just cause this isn't a fancy cafe, doesn't mean I can't eat these things", Mitsuha defends herself before I say anything. "Too many Tokyo girls are so concerned about what to eat, it's hard going out sometimes!" She laments again.

"I didn't say anything!" I protest, "I catch up with some of my high school friends still and we meet at cafes despite that sounding girly or childish," I reassure her.

"So you're sister's called Yotsuha?" I ask Mitsuha, changing the topic, "as in the Chinese characters being four leaves?"

"Yeah," Mitsuha replies, "and yes, I know your next question, my characters mean three leaves."

"So you have two more siblings?" I ask, not expecting her to answer in the affirmative. I'm trying to connect some dots to see if maybe I am a sibling separated at birth and my name should actually be branch or something!

"Not that I know of, although my dad still is very popular...he used to be our town mayor you know?" Mitsuha chuckles again, "no my mother is Futaba...", she pauses, "guess who's the 'one leaf' is in my family?" she quizzes me.

I pause, "Your grandmother," I state, somehow just knowing...

"Pretty good," Mitsuha, nods her head. Her phone buzzes and she looks down at it.

"Sorry, just texting my friends how to get here," Mitsuha apologises, "I used to hate having smart phones out when meeting people, but a few years back, it's somehow been a habit of mine to keep checking my phone… Maybe it's the Tokyo influence?" she postulates.

I chuckle in agreement, "me too, I don't know why, but I just keep feeling that I'm expecting a special message or information in my phone."

"Yes! Exactly," Mitsuha agrees, and just as quickly as she seemed to get excited, she becomes a bit sullen and looks at me, "I have had that exact same feeling…" she says softly. "I still haven't changed my phone after all these years too…" as she holds up her tattered white phone, "I think I'm somehow expecting something magical to happen on my phone..."

The the waitress brings over my coffee and a glass of water for Mitsuha, saying that the dessert will come out shortly. Mitsuha's phone buzzes again,

"So what's your boyfriend's name?" I ask nervously, "I want to remember it so I don't forget and be rude later, I'm often pretty bad with names."

"Sorry," Mitsuha replies, "my friends are here now," she suddenly stands up, "and I don't have a boyfriend... I just made it up I had one so you wouldn't feel awkward in accepting a coffee" she reveals laughing.

As she stands up, she waves at two people who are by the entrance of the café.

 _She doesn't have a boyfriend,_ I somehow smile. I swivel my neck around from looking at Mitsuha to the two friends at the entrance.

"Tessie… Sayaka?" the names somehow pours from my mouth.

Mitsuha looks at me, eyes wide, mouth open; "how did you know that?" she asks.

The two figures, that I identify as Tessie and Sayaka walk towards us.

* * *

Authors note: An earlier edit of this had Yotsuha attend the same school Taki did; for plot reasons, I had to change this. Please also let me know if you see any other typos/grammar errors or clunky voice passages so I can fix them! Your feedback is valuable for improving my writing as well as my attempt to honour the original source material!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Mitsuha

I stand shocked, how did he know their names?

Tessie and Sayaka walk over.

"What's with the shocked face?" Sayaka looks piercingly at me, "what have you done to our friend?" she asks Tachibana-kun with a quizzical glance.

"Do you know each other?" I ask them, "he somehow knew your names…"

Sayaka, Tessie and Tachibana-kun look at each other.

"No…" they say slowly in unison.

Tachibana-kun gulps, furrowing his brow as if trying to work out how he knows Tessie and Sa-chan's name.

"I think I overheard you guys talking about your wedding preparations!" Tachibana-kun pipes up, "at the Starbucks in Shibuya! I must have remembered Sayaka-san's name… or something…" Tachibana stalls off, "uh, but that sounds even creepier..."

"That's right creep, just remember, she's my woman!" Tessie pipes up with a forced growl in his voice. Tessie is a funny one; he has been a great friend to me, though he's very much one of those people where what you see, is what you get.

"Don't mind him," Sayaka says, "yes.. we were there yesterday, but it's always so packed there, so for you to recognise us… but, despite it sounding a bit creepy, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt" Sayaka continues, trying to make the conversation less awkward. "I'm Sayaka Natori, and this is my fiancee, Tessie. Tessie's just what we call him. He's full family name is actually…."

"Teshigawara…" Tachibana finish off. His face is pale like a ghost.

Tessie and Sayaka looks like they've seen a real ghost too.

"Eeehhh!?" Tessie exclaims, "not even the teachers at school or my colleagues call me that! How did you know?" Tessie screws his face up in mock horror, "are you actually stalking me instead of stalking Sa-chan!" he cries out, "I'm sorry but I'm taken!".

Tessie's real name is Katsuhiko Teshigawara. It's not a common name and we used to tease him for it all the time as kids. Who is this Tachibana guy? Why does he know Tessie's real name? Despite Tessie's mock horror, is Taki actually a stalker?

"Is this some kind of prank?" Sayaka demands, turning her head around, "like on those variety shows, or that American prank show and you're all going to yell out 'pun'ked' or say 'suprise!' or something like that?!"

"No!" Tachibana responds, "I… just… knew…"

A waiter interrupts us putting down my parfait on the table. Tessie and Sayaka orders a drink from the drink bar with Tessie adding an order of fries as the waiter is about to leave. Snapping back to our surroundings, we look around and noticing that we're making a bit of a commotion, we all shuffle into our seats.

I decide to try restart the introduction, "let me introduce Tachibana-kun, I didn't introduce him before..." I start the conversation as we're all seated, "I… uh, have only just met him and... uhh", I don't know what else to say.

"Umm, I'm Tachibana Taki," Tachibana introduces himself to everyone, taking over from my stilted attempt,"23 years old, architecture student at Sophia Univesity, uhh was a student.. Now still looking for a job…and uhh", Tachibana-kun also seems to stall.

Tessie and Sayaka laugh, "it's ok", Sayaka says, "we've been with Mitsuha for so long now and we know that she often goes into a weird fixation mode as if searching for something. The first was after the comet hit, Mitsuha was more concerned about coming to Tokyo than rebuilding in Gifu…

"Wait, you guys are from Itomori?", Tachibana-kun interrupts.

"Oh, you know the place?" Tessie asks Tachibana, "or perhaps 'knew' it, would be a better way of phasing my question?"

"Yeah, I've somehow had this weird interest on Itomori and the comet Tiamat for a while now… I even somehow visited the area once... I think... I don't remember too much about it, it all seems really hazy and the friends I went with don't seem to want to say too much either...Anyways, sorry I interrupted you Natori-san"

"Ah it's ok, it's pretty uncommon for people to know the name of our village, but yeah, so Mitsuha has been fixed on some things. The first was moving to Tokyo, the second was having lunch in the art centre at Roppongi, and the third… well it appears to be you," Sakaya continued.

I already told him I wasn't that interested in the art centre at Roppongi Sayaka! I yell silently. Even if he ends up being a creep, at least for now, I somehow want to make him look at me in a positive light, and not some rich uptown Tokyo girl wannabe... I was meant to be meeting Tessie and Sayaka to help decide on venues for their wedding. When I saw, Tachibana-kun, I had this strong tugging that I had to see him. That I had to get off the train, and run to the previous stop as I knew he was going to be there. I had messaged Sayaka saying that I saw someone and had to meet them before I got off the train. Sayaka messaged me back, asking me where I was going.

The next thing I knew, I had invited Tachibana-kun to a coffee, and Sayaka and Tessie were already on their way to Yotsuya… which led to us here now.

"So the question is now," Tessie was speaking, "who is Taki Tachibana and why is Mitsuha so entranced by you. I have my theories..."

Tessie brought out a pack of playing cards, putting a few cards down on the table.

"Alright,' Tessie begins, "I picked this up from the convenience store in the station upon arriving here." Tessie opens the pack and then lays five cards on the table in front of Tachibana-kun.

"Ahh," I protest, "do we really have to do this?" I ask Tessie. I am curious about why I'm drawn to Tachibana, but knowing Tessie, I'm not sure I like where this is going to be going."Also, I didn't even know they sold trump cards at the convenience store," I interject.

"Pick a card and tell me what you think it is" Tessie asks Tachibana, ignoring my protest, "try and see it with your 'mind's eye'".

What the heck is a 'mind's eye'? Tessie picked up this weird fascination with the paranormal after we managed to avoid being hit by the comet. He insisted that we were somehow possessed or manipulated to call the town council meeting, which decided on us evacuating the town Sayaka apologises to Tachibana.

"C'mon pick one," Tessie calls out.

Tachibana picks up the first card,

"Uhh, this is a joker," he says, flipping over the first card, which does show a Joker, "and then this is also a joker," Tachibana continues flipping the the next card over, "and the next two are also jokers, and the 5th card will be an ace", Tachibana says flipping the last card.

Tessie's mouth is wide open, I whack my forehead in embarrassment for Tessie.

"You didn't shuffle the deck and new packs usually have jokers on the top followed by Ace…" Tachibana explains.

Tessie closes his mouth, "ahh… " he says, trying to come up with a way to dig himself out, "but… how did you know the Jokers were at the top and not the bottom?" he asks feebly,

"That was just a guess" Tachibana-kun responded somewhat pleased with himself. "Sorry, I had to take that opportunity. I'll do it seriously now" Tachibana-kun apologises.

Tessie collected the cards again, shuffling the deck and lay five more cards out.

This time, Tachibana fails to guess the cards. Tachibana also fails the second and third tries. Sayaka and I look at each other and resign ourselves that none of us are leaving until Tessie finishes his psychic testing regime. We both go up to get a drink refill.

I figure Tachibana is ok to continue this, so I talk to Sayaka about the wedding. We're all still pretty young, but after the comet hit, and Tessie realised he almost lost his life in it, he had a huge 're-think' of life and decided to ask Sayaka out...well he proposed before formally asking her out. The two of them have been together ever since. Although, they only decided to follow me out to Tokyo after they made more concrete plans on having the wedding ceremony and finished the resettlement process in Gifu. The country-side is for when you retire, Tessie proclaimed, and Tokyo is where you're at when you're young and going to make it in the world. So we've been really close friends for a while now, even if Tessie is a bit of a dope.

"Ok, how about…Sa-chan, draw a picture without showing Tachibana, and then it's your turn after Mitsuha", Tessie demands of us.

"What sort of test is this now?" I ask, hanging my head in embarrassment.

Sayaka resignedly draws a boat on the piece of paper. Tachibana guesses a fish. I don't really have an interest in seeing if Tachibana is a psychic, so I quickly draw a circle. And Tachibana guesses a circle!

"I saw your hand move in a circle and it was quite quick…" Tachibana apologises.

Tessie closes his mouth from its momentarily agape position. I have to give it to Tachinabana, he is pretty observant.

"Alright," Tessie declares to all of us, "I have decided that Tachibana-kun only has average to maybe slightly above average extra sensory perception powers!" Tessie quickly gathers his cards back up putting them away.

Tachibana looks a bit meek not knowing how to take this commotion.

"But that doesn't leave out other options." Tessie declares after popping the card pack into his shoulder bag, "which are 1) that he is the reincarnation of a family member, 2) he is a time traveler who has either lost part of his memories or is pretending or 3) he is an esper with telepathic powers to read our thoughts. I'm actually pretty sure it's 3 but I need some more equipment before I can test this…

"I don't think I'm a time traveller or an esper", Tachibana protests,

"Or 4) he is a stalker" Sayaka pipes up, teasing Tachibana. Tachibana splutters.

"Our meeting at the chapel venue is approaching soon," Sayaka interjects, "so we have to get going now," she apologises.

Her appointment is at 11:30, which is approaching soon. As frustrated as I am, we decide to wrap things up. Tachibana-kun has a job interview in the afternoon too and was making his way to the library to prepare.

"So meet at this location tomorrow afternoon at 4 o'clock" Tessie declares, handing Tachibana a piece of paper with an address on it. "All of us be there. We can solve this mystery tomorrow! I'll make the booking as we're on the train."

Tachibana meekly looks at at the paper, then at me, sighs then agrees to to go.

"Although, please call me Taki", he asks me, "it feels awkward hearing Tachibana used..."

I practice saying his name, 'Taki', and it comes off as rather comfortable and not as embarrassing as I thought it would be.

As we leave, Tessie is still talking to Sayaka and Taki on his hypothesis on why there seems to be a connection between Tachibana and me.

"Or it could be psychometry powers where he can read information from an object, maybe it was latent. Or perhaps precognition where he knows whats going to happen first and that's why he knew our names as he 'heard' it from the future…"

I think that all this analysing is killing whatever connection Taki-kun and I have.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Girl

 _The girl wakes up. It is night time. She looks around. She is in a cave of some sort. Water seems to be trickling down the walls. She startles back, trying to avoid a trickle of water that is about to touch her. She hits her head on the roof of the cave. She chides herself for being so worried about getting her clothes wet. It was only a small amount of water._

 _She isn't sure if the water trickles are caused by moisture or rain, but she doesn't want to be in the cave any longer. She pats her clothing. She seems dry. It isn't cold either for some reason. She looks behind herself, there is a small shrine there. By the side of the shrine is a round ceramic bottle. The character for alcohol, 'sake' is written on it. There is a piece of bread there too, a manju. She better leave that for the gods. She somehow remembers that she's responsible for that alcoholic drink being there too, and something about it makes her not want to drink it._

 _She only remembers roughly how she got here. Her head and body feels a little foggy. But she feels like there is something important about to happen._

 _The image of a meteor, enters her mind. Is it meteor or comet she wonders, or are they the same?_

 _She crawls out of the cave and looks around. The moon is shining, it is almost full moon. With the shine of the moon, she can see the grass in the field around her and the trees. It's not raining she realises, and marvels at the amount of moisture that can form in the grass to cause trickles of water._

 _The image of a village enters her mind. The village! She remembers suddenly. There's some sort of danger coming to it._

 _She scrambles to her feet and walks quickly along what she thinks is a path. There's a sheer wall of mountain all around her. She's in a crater she tells herself. She knows that there's only one exit point from this crater though. She'll have to get out of here through that point._

 _She sees a clump of trees in the distance, and feeling confident in that direction, she picks up speed and starts running towards the trees in that distance._

 _It seems to take a really long time to get to the edge even though she's running. Strange though, she thinks, she's not even tired. Perhaps it's adrenaline, the girl thinks to herself._

 _She reaches the forest clearing and starts climbing upwards using plants and shrubs as hand and footholds to prop herself up and prevent herself from sliding backwards._

 _She continues until finally she is up at the top. She is on the edge of the crater. She looks around, and realises she must continue further along before she can see her village._

 _She enters the forest. It is dark inside it. The moonlight is blocked by the tree, and she has to adjust her eyes so that she doesn't trip on any weeds or roots on the forest floor. The forest seems oddly quiet._

 _She progresses on until she sees a patch of sky. Lights seem to be emanating from the ground. A sparkle dances in the air, and she hears a sharp pop sound. A firework. It must be the village in front. She edges forward and sees the village. It's still there._

 _She is grateful and leaves a sigh of relief. She looks below and sees a flurry of action taking place below on the edge of town. She watches for a while, it looks strange, half the town seems to be doing something, whilst the other half seems to be asleep still._

 _Suddenly a cacophony of sounds erupts from the forest as birds and beast jump out as if to flee from something. The animals don't pay any mind to the girl watching the town below._

 _The girl looks up into the sky, some more bright lights seem to be travelling in the sky. They aren't fireworks she realises. She sees the bright trails in the sky. Comets._

 _No meteorites. She remembers, meteors are in space, meteorites are when they hit Earth._

 _Meteorites… her thoughts of school geography shatters as she watches in horror as the meteorite or comet pieces make their explosions on the ground. This time, rather than bright lights being expelled from the firework previously, the firey balls explode into the town, exploding the town into balls of dirt and darkness._

 _The girl stands there paralysed. In shock._

 _She takes a step back, her vision starts fading as she feels herself losing balance. On her peripheral she thinks he sees a shadowy figure approaching her before she passes out._


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Taki

Yesterday was a weird encounter… Yet somehow, I still felt comfortable with Tessie, Sayaka and Mitsuha. It had a feeling of catching up with old friends... The time we had though was too short. Despite Teshigawara's intentions, I didn't get much chance to work out anything about Mitsuha. But if she's going to be at that location, then I'll be there too. I need to find out more questions on who she is… Perhaps today will be good though and Teshigawara will work out who I am or who Mitsuha is, and can explain something.

I'm still job hunting. I haven't given up yet, today will be a 'break' for me. I've been in this sort of 'funk' for a really long time now, and I just know that it's connected to Mitsuha somehow. Seeing Mitsuha and working out what our connection is may mean I can become more productive with myself.

Job hunting has been going hard. I've broadened my job hunt to further outside Tokyo too. This morning I was looking at Nagoya to see if there were any companies there that I could apply for. It's not too far away from Tokyo, but I think it's more important for me to find a place that I really like. Maybe I'm being a little fussy though, I haven't had much success with interviews at the moment too. How can I say I want to design and build natural landscapes before I even have any experience. Perhaps I should lie in my interviews, and try and say whatever they want me to say. Although I have heard that there are a few foreign companies that want to design environmentally friendly buildings, but from what I've seen so far, those companies don't look that natural to me.

Today, I have to be at some location in the Minato area. So many big companies and foreigners like to be in this area. Maybe a design company can 'discover' me like an idol and they employ me. I always keep a resume on me just in case I have an opportunity. I feel pretty pathetic, but even with dwindling population in Japan, competition for work seems so hard. I keep telling myself that I want to work, yet, deep inside I'm also paralysed with fear knowing that once I start work, that's it for the rest of my life.

I shake the thoughts from my head, and look down at my phone, walking until I arrive at the location Google Maps tells me to go to. It's an apartment block. Looks like one of those old ones built on the quick after the war. White front, plasterboard walls, square spiralling staircase on the outside made of leftover cast iron.

Even if it's in an expensive area, whoever we're meant to see can't be doing well if he's in a rundown building like this. I'm getting the feeling that 'Teshigawa quality' may be something I have to recognise to avoid for future reference.

I see Tessie and Sayaka already there waiting. Mitsuha doesn't seem to have arrived yet.

"It's ok, we'll go up first", Tessie says, ignoring any greeting. He seems excited and eager to start whatever it is we're meant to do.

Sayaka greets me, "Mitsuha will be here soon, she's pretty un-Japanese as she's chronically always late."

Tessie walks up the metallic staircase to the second floor. He's holding a piece of paper which seems to have an address written on it.

"Hmm Room 204", Tessie confirms and knocks on the door.

A groan emits from inside, "what do you want?" a voice shouts out.

"Uh, I have an appointment to have a 'psychic testing'. I saw your advertisement in my girlfriend's magazine saying that you specialised in doing psychic readings in people," Tessie stammers out.

So it's still this psychic testing sort of stuff that we're doing. I guess I'm already here, so I may as well stick it through. Somehow, despite ridiculing all these supernatural things as a kid , somewhere through high school, I became more accepting of things. Maybe it was maturity. Although, this sort of testing is... pushing my boundaries a little, I must admit.

"Ah, crap," we hear the voice mumble, "uhh, you've come to the wrong place. This is the residential quarters. Umm, how many is it in your party and what's everyone's genders?" the voice calls out.

"There will be four of us, though, it's mostly just one male and female we want to test," Tessie replies back, "could you tell us where to go as this was the only address provided to me?"

The door opens and a skinny man in shorts and singlet top opens the door, "Hmm, give me a moment… is this her?" he asks, looking up and down at Sayaka. Without waiting for a reply, he continues "I don't do the appraisals myself, I need to bring you to the office. It's not far from here, I'll take you there. Just give me a moment to get ready."

He closes the door and we wait outside slightly bemused.

Mitsuha pokes her head around the corridor. "Uh, what's happening," she asks, "I saw you guys standing on the balcony from the outside."

I feel more glad, now that Mitsuha has arrived. We explain the situation to Mitsuha that we went to the wrong place, and as we wait we hear the man call on the phone, "yeah, I have one coming over. There's some friends too who'll be there, so prepare some extra drinks for them."

I get to have a brief conversation with Mitsuha, as she apologises to me for dragging me out.

"It's ok", I tell her, "I'm also interested to know why I'm so deeply drawn to you… not that anyone wouldn't be really drawn to you cause you look so uh…" I feel my ears heat up turning red as I gush to Mitsuha…

Sayaka laughs, "have to be careful with this one", she nudges Mitsuha pointing to me.

I stay silent in embarrassment.

"It's ok," Mitsuha says, "I know what you mean. And I'll take the compliment,' She smiles sweetly at me.

We stand nervously outside the door for a bit longer when it finally opens again. This time the man is more properly dressed; buttoned up white shirt with small blue dots tucked into dark blue jeans and a gaudy faux crocodile leather big belt and buckle.

"The venue isn't far from here. Just need to walk maybe a block down to the offices," he tells us as he double checks his lock on the front door.

"Just let me tell the office that there's another person coming," he apologises, "they don't like being surprised by extra numbers," he explains.

"If their psychic though, shouldn't they know how many people will turn up?" Mitsuha probes the man.

The man remains silent, and continues to lead us to the offices. The actual office isn't too far from the house, it's along a major street, with shops lining each side of the street. We approach a Lawsons, and pointing to a door next door to the Lawsons, the man motioned us inside and up some stairs.

I take a quick look at the name plaques on the side wall, "Magic Motion Videos, Level 2, Arcane Analysts Level 3. Level 4 has a blank slide" I read quickly. I'm assuming we're going to level three.

I am proven right as we skip the door on level 2 to proceed to level 3. The stairway is narrow only allowing us to walk single file, but we get through the doors and spill out into a small reception area.

"Welcome", the receptionist beams at us. She's wearing glasses, white blouse that is 'filled out' at the top, black skirt. Almost a stereotypical OL… "Um, could everyone please fill in these forms, if possible we'd also like at least one of you to sign using your hanko too" she smiles politely. Teshigawa takes the forms and distributes them out to us.

"Please wait on these couches here for a while", our guide tells us pointing to couch on the right of the reception table, "there's pens on the table that you can use".

We sit down and he disappears behind a door on the other side of the receptionist table. We start filling out the forms. It looks like a lot of paperwork.

"Why do we all have to fill these forms out?" Sayaka asks, "Isn't this just for Mitsuha and Taki?"

"Ah this is for privacy reasons. An area like psychic reading is often looked badly upon, especially if no results come out. So we like everyone to sign an acknowledgement of this so that they can't sue us for defamation or lying." The receptionist smiles again. Don't they get sick of smiling all day, I wonder.

We do as she says and we finish filling in the forms. Just our name, address and sign. There's a lot of small print on the back page, but we trust the receptionist's words as she comes over to us to pick up the forms. I end up using my hanko to sign a final form, as no-one else has brought it with them it seems. I guess that's one benefit of job hunting now, I carry around important things like those.

As we give back the forms, the receptionist disappears from the table for a short while before reappearing with a tray of cups and a tea pot. She delicately arranges the paper cups in front of all of us and pours a small portion of light brown liquid into each cup.

"It's houji-cha, please drink slowly and enjoy. Someone will see you shortly." she says as she heads back behind the front desk.

We sit back into the couches waiting for the next instructions as we watch a tv hanging near the ceiling playing on mute on the wall opposite the couch. The tea tastes different to the cheap stuff I buy from Aeon, but i'm not complaining. It's refreshing as we haven't had anything to drink since morning.

We watch the TV in silence.

"Is it cause the TV is on mute, that we are all really quiet too?" I nervously ask everyone, as they chuckle in response.

"I dunno," Mitsuha responds quietly, "this feels like a library or dentist room, waiting in silence till we're called…I'm also feeling a tad drowsy this morning" Mitsuha apologises to me.

We fall back into silence as we look at the TV. We can see the pictures and read the subtitles that's displayed on the screen, it seems that there was a meteorite that hit the water off from the Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama. It appears no-one was injured but the impact has affected the structural integrity of the shopping centre so they've had to close it until further notice. Police have had to cordon off the area and prevent any 'opportunistic' passersby from doing a bit of quick 'shopping'.

As I watch the screen, seeing them interview a shop owner, and a local who was fishing nearby, I feel like I'm there by the port-side, feeling the waves move me up and down along like a toy boat. Was the Minato Mirai area actually floating? I don't remember much of the place actually, I think to myself as the TV seems to come to life for me. I hear footsteps and I look up, a man in brown suit enters through the front door of the place, he seems to be accompanied by two burlier men.

"Hi, my name is Takeshi," he smiles at us, "how are you all feeling? Are you all feeling sleepy?" he asks.

I try to speak up replying in greeting, "Hii…." I slur, as I look to the side of me as Mitsuha has slumped to the side leaning on my shoulders.

This feels nice, feeling her head on my shoulders, I think to myself as I also drift off into sleep, thinking of meteorites, Mitsuha and men in suits.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Mitsuha

I open my eyes. It seems that I'm lying down somewhere. My head hurts and my eyes feel bloated. What happened to me? I wonder. I remember sitting on the couch watching the TV when I felt really sleepy….

"Sayaka?" I groan out, "Tessie? Taki?"

I hear a moan next to me. It's Sayaka.

I try and rub my eyes before to clear my vision, but my arms don't move. My arms and legs feel really heavy.

"Mitsuha?" I hear Sayaka call my name.

"Yeah, what happened?" I ask her, speaking slowly, and hoping to get an explanation of events. I haven't felt this gross before, even compared to the time I was a kid sneaking a full glass of alcohol from my grandmother's shrine. I groan again.

"Mitsuha?" Sayaka's voice sounds more alarmed, "Tessie?" Sayaka calls out sounding more distraught.

"Where are we?"

The sound in Sayaka's voice makes me more aware that something is wrong. As feeling comes back to my body, I realise that my arms and legs aren't just heavy, they've been tied down. I try kicking my legs harder to set it free. The ropes seem to envelop my whole body, constricting my arms, legs and chest. They don't budge.

I feel a jab of cold run down my arms as I suddenly snap alert. I crane my neck around to see where we are. I see Sayaka next to me, her arms are tied together above her head and body tied the same as mine. The ropes are twined, red and thick, like out of some creepy bondage horror…

A sudden sense of dread washes over me. I had heard about these things before. Normally these perverted groups put advertisements in magazines or online, targeting girls. They offer modelling or acting offers, claiming to be talent scouts and booking interviews for young aspiring girls. Trying to break into the fashion industry, I had heard horror stories from friends at college who had model friends. These groups work in the adult 'entertainment' business, and what happens is that they take advantage of girls who visit, either by promising things in returns for certain actions, or through drugging them. I can't understand anyone finding pleasure in abusing girls. These people are sick.

"HELP!" I scream out, "CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?". I'm not sure what else I can do in this situation. I try thrashing around again in the chair to no avail. I can hear Sayaka also screaming and trying to break free. I try and calm myself down, if I panic now, then I won't be able to think clearly. I try reason with myself, to think about what to do. I try to think of what to do with more levity; thought passes my mind, I have to kill Tessie for getting us in this situation.

"HELP!" Sayaka also screams out, but it is futile.

"Ah, you girls are awake?" I hear a thin voice call out. I can't tell if it's a girl or a guy's voice. I shiver. "No-one can hear you here; the walls are sound-proof… and better soundproofing than your average karaoke room too," the voice continues calmly.

The voice pauses "let me put you up straight so we can see you better" the voice calls out.

Suddenly the table starts vibrating a bit, as we feel it slowly moving, tilting and rotating on an axis putting the thing we are lying on vertical. I feel a my arms begin to stretch as I feel my arms holding up more weight. I see Sayaka next to me, hanging from her arms, tied to the top . Despite what the person says, we keep screaming.

We see a person wearing flowing purple robes with a gold turban wrapped around their head. I still can't work out if it's a he or she.

"So let me explain a little bit about how this is going to work," the person continued, acting as if we were oblivious to our cries for help, "as you can probably guess from this set up… certain things will happen to both you beautiful looking girls."

From the corner of my eyes I can see Sayaka's eyes widen in horror.

"Yes, yes," the robed person spoke sounding more excited, "fear… I can feel it growing".

"Simply put, I am a clairvoyant, a pyschic, a medium, a spiritual projectionist, or whatever you want to call it. You can call me 'Mystique'. And I am here to do a spiritual reading of you today. You do get what you pay for, at least," the self-proclaimed psychic declares to us.

"You're a psychopath," I spit at Mystique.

"That, I may be. I wasn't always like this, I used to be just an average psychic, trying to make money like everyone else, going about our daily lives. But one does not earn one much money as a psychic. Girl's aren't interested in you, only interested in you telling them some happy story about their futures…" Mystique elaborated, "so I came to a bit of a, shall we say, symbiotic relationship with some affiliates that I happened to meet."

Sayaka and I hang there, tired from struggling. We hang there with disbelief. This was dangerous, and this guy was creepy.

"It was really pure coincidence, that both my associates and myself turned out to… shall we say, really value the effects of… fear. To use a double entendre, but fear really does give me a rise as well. You see when humans exhibit fear, they are at their most primal and basic, and therefore much easier for me to get a reading. My reading powers are greatly enhanced. Without fear, your thoughts and emotions and everything else just gets in the way..."

"This is just for show, right? I'm sufficiently scared now, can you either do the reading or let us go now" Sayaka asks the psychic, "I never even signed up for a reading too, It was Tessie's fault! And only Mi-chan and Taki-kun who was going to get a reading!" Sayaka breaks into tears.

"I will do a reading from both you very shortly," Mystique tells us, ignoring Sayaka's pleas, "you both signed the forms, so you both have a reading done," he says holding up the forms we had just signed. "Ah wonderful, my associates appear to be ready now."

Four men appear besides the robed psychic. They all have masks on. Two of them has camera gear on them, the other two… were wearing only shorts and had a container with various things insides… I don't want to know. We need to get out of here… someone please? Taki? I wish inside my head.

I hear Sayaka sobbing louder now.

The men start walking towards us, as I hear Sayaka chant a prayer through her sobs. I say a pray too, hoping that we be saved from whatever seems likely to happen to us.

"I'll start my psychic reading with you", the robed person who called himself Mystique looks at me, "ahhh" he breathes in, "I can feel something about you…" he puts his hand, finger pointing in the air, then arches his backwards seizing up as if struck by lightning and proceeds to goes into some sort of trance.

One of the shirtless guys walks towards me. He's holding a knife. I struggle as hard as I can. I can feel the ropes around my hand and leg burning. I don't care. I don't want it like this. His knife reaches out, the tip lightly touching my chest below the chin.

"If you don't want to be cut, you better stop struggling missus", the creep speaks up, "please call me Jo. I hope we can be friendly with each other now as we're going to be well acquainted with each other soon," he sneers at me as he brings his face close to mine and breathes on me.

I close my eyes, his breath smells rancid. I feel the knife move downwards and I hear fabric rip. Taki's face float in my head. Maybe that's all I can do, pretend it's not happening, pretend it's someone else. Something sticky rolls on my cheeks, I realise it's tears. I'm crying uncontrollably, I'm shrieking hysterically. This isn't my fault right? I cry out to myself.

"WAIT!" I hear the crazy psychic person call out abruptly, "stand back! There's something wrong with this girl. She's going to cause problems for us!" He is acting panicked now. "She's not…!" he screams and then stops...

I open my eyes. The creep called Jo steps back a bit, annoyed.

"She's not fully human…" Mystique says in disbelief, his body posture had straightened up now, and he was pointing at me, "I can sense that half of her is missing. Not here. But I can see a shining light inside her, as if trying to repair the brokenness…. I can see a great danger that will befall Japan because of her… I can see another shape with her. A boy, another empty ghost… Their black void is reaching up into the skies, and consuming the world." he staggers back in horror...

"Then this girl definitely deserves what we're going to do with her then" Jo speaks up. "Let me discipline her nicely," he sneers as the he approaches me again.

"PLEASE ANYONEI" scream again. I see Taki's face appear in my mind, as if comforting me, "TAKI!" I wail…

And as if everything is in slow motion, I see Taki and Tessie run in from behind where the camera men were, jumping in and crash tackling them both. My heart leaps with hope.

Taki quickly pulls himself up off the floor, yelling something at Tessie and then sprints towards me. He lunges at the man called Jo, who had now turned around, holding his knife poised. The knifed man readies himself for Taki's lunge, holding the knife out in front of him. I hold my breath.

As if out from a movie, in slow motion, I see Taki taking leaping up, holding what seems to be a syringe in his hand. As he reaches the zenith of his leap, his left hand swings across, deflecting the knife away from himself. And in a fluid motion, I see his right hand jabbing down hard, the syringe moving beyond the edge of the mask and into the person's neck.

The would-be assailant crumpled to the floor unconscious, needle still sticking out from his neck. I am saved.

Taki looks at me, "are you ok Mitsuha?" he asks me gently. I nod silently at him, tears still in my eyes.

Taki nods, then bends down and picks up the knife that had fallen on the ground. His face looks angry, but his composure is somehow still calm and almost graceful. He gives a quick glance at me, turning his back to me as he rises. There's one more creep that's still standing and he was carefully approaching Taki.

I see the Tessie slowly coming up too, the two camera man also have needles sticking out of their bodies, slumped to the side. Mystique is cowering on the floor,

"It's him the other ghost!" he screams and sobs as he curls up into a fetal position looking pathetic.

Taki walks back up until he can feel that he's next to me. Still facing the remaining creep, he makes a few cuts into the rope and sets my hands, legs and body free. He passes me the knife, and tells me to let Sayaka free too.

I rub my sore wrists and grab the knife from Taki as I move to help let Sayaka free.

Taki moves into what appeared to be some sort of fighting stance and edges towards the last standing creep. The creep pulls out a box cutter from his pockets and moves forward.

"Just let us go, we'll let you be, put the knife down" Taki says calmly to his opponent.

Taki's opponent ignores his words and continues forward, silently. Taki moves closer as if getting ready to engage when suddenly I notice Tessie running from behind and crash tackling the last standing person to the ground.

Taki dashes forward, holding the string that had previously bound me. Together Taki and Tessie pin the last guy to the floor and hog tie his hands and feet up so he can't move.

My heart leaps, we have been saved!

"Pass me the rest of the rope too Mitsuha," Taki asks me. Shaken, I grab the rope and throw it to him. I'm too scared to get anywhere near those men.

Taki ties the rest of the unconscious men's hands, and stands up.

"We got to get out of here," Taki says. Tessie nods at him.

Sayaka and I in silence follow them.

Taki looks at me, and then quickly looks away. He uncomfortably takes off his sweater and gives it to me.

I look down at my clothes, and am quickly embarrassed. I quickly and quietly take the sweater and put it on. It's still warm with the heat of Taki on it.

"Come on," Taki tells me, "we have to get out of here now."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Boy

 _The boy sees her standing on the edge of the cliff looking over the town. He knows what the girl is looking at and what is going to happen. He has seen this scene before, over and over on repeat for a duration of time that seems endless. The girl entering the crater was new though. This was an addition to the scene for him. He had been waiting for her though. It was time now to progress, to find out the next instructions._

 _He walks over to where the girl is standing, when the animals flee the forest. It is time already, the boy realises._

 _The comet hits. The sound and silence that follows is still deafening._

 _He sees the girl stumble back and slowly fall to the ground unconscious._

 _He was the same the first time, he recalls. This scene. He remembers that gut-wrenching feeling seeing the town evaporate. The lights of cars and the crowds by the lake, consumed. He had collapsed the first time too._

 _Each time, he would awaken to see the scene again, and again… until he slowly realised that the scene was changing. The first time he noticed; the crowd that had gathered near the lake had disappeared. The firework displays seemed shorter than previously. Soon the cars were more sparse. As horrific and devastating as the damage from the comet was, it seemed that the village slowly somehow managed to evacuate, the devastation seemed less and less._

 _He walks over to the unconscious girl, and shuffles her body straight. He rests her head on his lap and waits for her to awake. It's strange, he thinks to himself. Even though the town below has disappeared, and the devastation massive, time has made him calm. Time to yourself is scary, he thinks. He remembers the torment at first when he only had his own thoughts to keep him company, but that slowly giving way to an appreciation and maturity that he thinks has made him stronger._

 _The sounds of the forest and scene below has quietened down. The boy looks up at the moonlight. It is always that same almost full-moon shape._

 _He feels the girl's head move. She is awake now._

 _He looks down at her, she looks up at him. Their eyes meet and they smile. She sits up, and then looks around, eyes wide in panic. He watches the girl get to her feet and walk back to the cliff edge. He stands up and follows behind her._

 _He reaches an arm out and rests it on her shoulder, holding her in reassurance._

 _After a while, he motions to her, leading her back to the cave. She follows him obediently._

 _In silence they walk out of the forest and down the slope of the crater towards the centre._ _They reach the cave again, and he motions for her to wait. The boy goes into the cave and, emerging a short while later, he brings out a piece of bread, the manju, and the sake bottle. He breaks the manju in half, and motions for her to eat. He eats one half and waits for her to eat the other half. He then takes a drink from the ceramic sake bottle. She reluctantly takes a drink too._

 _He smiles and holds her, motioning for her to sit or lie down. He's done this before. He sits down too and the colours and lights swirl, embracing them as they fall into dream._


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Taki

"Uhh, here's a towel and these are the best spare clothes that I could find…" I apologise to Mitsuha as I hand her a clean towel and some spare clothes of mine. I pulled out an old shirt that was too small for me and an elastic banded sport shorts I had lying around since school days. Hopefully the elastic and drawstrings would make it more fitting. They were the smallest clothing I had that I had brought with me when I moved out of home.

"Feel free to take as long as you like and use whatever is in the bathroom; I have face-wash stuff by the sink too if you need. I'm pretty slow at preparing food and get nervous if someone's watching me, so take you time," I say, freaking out that I will be cooking for a girl and praying that I don't screw up.

How did it end up like this! Mitsuha's at my place now and is going to be spending the night! Today has been the biggest and weirdest roller coaster day ever that I can remember.

After we escaped from those crazy kidnappers, we immediately went to the police to report our incident. We decided to go the Mita police station as it was a bigger station than just one of the smaller police boxes. We presumed that the bigger station would have had the capacity and knowledge of what to do.

The girls were obviously tired and frightened from their ordeal, and Tessie and I were probably just trying to be stoic and ignoring our own emotions about the event. Tessie was extremely apologetic about everything, but I think the event was too raw for us to really get angry and blame him. Still, scared and shaken as we were, we decided to push on to tell the police what happened. I had just hoped that the meeting with the police wouldn't be bad, as it would have made Mitsuha and Sayaka re-live their ordeal again… We were also a little worried that the organisation involved with our kidnapping had our contact details from the form we signed, so who knows what could happen to us. I'm not sure if our worries were caused by too many yakuza movies we had seen though, but the thought did worry me.

When we got to the police station, we walked through the doors and was met by a cold glass window front. It was like what one would see at the bank. A short, blue, melamine counter leaned out for us to wait at on one side of the glass window, and a dark grey metal roller shutter blind lay on the other side of the glass, preventing us from seeing anything beyond.

 _Push the button for assistance_ , a sign on the counter in front of the window where we stood read out.

We looked on the counter and saw the electric-doorbell like button and pushed it. We heard a chime ring out in the back, and after a short while, the shutter blinds chugged upwards rolling in a noisy and stilted mechanical motion. When the blinds had ascended, we saw a dumpish male police officer sitting in front of us with a disinterested look.

"Uh, we'd like to report a kidnapping and sexual assault case" I spoke first.

"Where and when was this?" the police officer asked, "and if you're after compensation, you should speak to a lawyer instead, we just do prosecution."

We were taken aback by the policeman's attitude. His name badge was on his breast pocket and read 'Mori'.

"Don't mess with us!" Tessie snarled at him, "do you have any idea what sort of mess we just escaped from?"

"Please don't raise your voice sir, I will get the details from you soon," the police officer replied back in a monotone voice. He sighed, "alright, we have an interview room open, if you would like to come through, I'll take your details and you can tell me what happened." He pushed a button for the metallic blinds to roll down again, and he popped off his chair and seemed to waddle off, disappearing off to the side. A short while later, a door that was flush with the wall with no handles opened up for us, with the policeman standing and motioning for us to go through.

We sat down with the officer and slowly provided details and an account of what happened. Tessie showed a photo of the advertisement he saw in Sayaka's magazine, which led up to our ordeal. Tessie and I explained how we managed to escape from being confined, and how we managed to find the girls and rescue them. Mitsuha explained what happened with them, about the creepy psychic person called Mystique and the would be abusers that held a knife to her. I was glad that nothing further happened. I think if we had found out more, both Tessie and I would have become rather un-Japanese and have stormed into the building again making it so that we would be the ones being arrested instead. Mitsuha held my hand as she talked. I held it back, trying to reassure her that I was there to support her.

When we had finished our recount, the police officer's expression seemed to have softened. "I'm sorry for what you guys had to go through," the police officer responded, "in this area there's so much red-light district activity, so we get many ladies who work at clubs and snack bars who want to complain about some businessman in order to extort them for more money. Or university students making extra money on the side, and then changing their stories when their boyfriends find out about their side job, instead the girls now claiming abuse. We get pretty cynical working at this station," Officer Mori explained to us.

I still don't think that's a good reason for the officer's attitude, but I let it slide.

"So are we going in now to arrest those people? Before they can destroy any evidence?" Mitsuha asked.

"I'm really sorry what happened to you guys, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow, or the day after at the latest before we can mobilise and do anything" the police officer apologised again.

Tessie stood up, slamming his palms onto the table. I think he was restless and feeling guilty about getting us into the mess in the first place.

"Why can't we go now?" Tessie demanded rudely.

"Normally we would go instantly!" the policeman barked back, "heck, I'd go by myself if I could!" he growled.

He calmed down and spoke to us more calmly, "we're really short staffed right now. I'm not sure if you heard, but more meteorites have hit Tokyo. Well they seem to be hitting intermittently all over Japan, maybe it's climate change or something, trying to remind us of the original Kyoto Protocol as they do this Paris Agreement thing," Officer Mori digressed, "well, we have a meteorite hit in Shinagawa as well. The rail lines are ok, but there's pandemonium right now from the damage caused. People are still trapped, and as much of the police force as possible has been mustered to help with the rescue and crowd control. We're really short staffed." The police officer sighed.

"I got shot half a year ago by some yamaguchi, and now have a permanent limp. So that means it's a desk job for me until retirement," the policeman elaborated, "but don't worry. I'll call the necessary people, and I'll have get a team to investigate. I have a daughter about your age too, and I'd feel terrible if something were to happen to them as well."

We left our details with the policeman, and then left the police station. He said he'd give Mitsuha a call later when more details were worked out.

"Did you guys want to eat dinner together?" I asked the group as it was dark by the time we had finished with the police.

"I'll shout, as part of my saying sorry for today," Tessie volunteered.

The look on everyone else's faces though showed that we were all too tired and shaken up to want to eat anything or stay out any longer.

"I'm tired," Mitsuha said,

"Where do you live?" I asked Mitsuha, "I'll walk you home," I offered.

"I don't want to go home though," Mitsuha whispered, "I'm scared to be home alone right now,"

Sakaya nodded in agreement as Tessie puts his hands on her shoulders.

"We don't have much space, but if you want..." Sayaka offered Mitsuha.

"No, it's ok, I think you guys need some alone time together, especially after what happened", Mitsuha interrupted them.

"You can stay at mine", I blurted out, "I have a separate room and living area with a spare futon, so you can take my room and I can stay in the living room. I think I'm also a bit shaken and wouldn't want to be alone too."

"Where are your parents?" Mitsuha asked me.

"They live in Tokyo too, and I would probably try ask one of my parents if I could stay with them too… but they got divorced and have their own families now, so it's kinda awkward for me..." I explained. It happened a while ago, but I'm ok with it. Living by myself is liberating in its own ways too. At least in Tokyo, parents divorcing was now more common compared to other parts of the country, so I haven't had to face too much prejudice now.

"You won't do anything weird to our friend will you?" Sayaka interjected, trying hard to smile and make a joke, "a poor damsel in distress alone with a man?"

'Absolutely not!" I shuddered, "especially not after today's events" I said quietly. Everyone else quietened too.

We eventually parted ways, and I took Mitsuha back to my neighbourhood. I asked her if we could pop into the convenience store as we passed by the Sunny's on the way home from the station. I wanted to pick up some groceries to cook at home as I didn't have much ingredients.

"I can cook" Mitsuha protested, "especially if you're letting me stay the night".

"It's ok," I said, "I won't make anything fancy, just something easy so that you can relax as much as possible."

I think that convinced Mitsuha, though she ended up picking some extra things up and handing money to the cash register first and paid for the grocery bill.

When we got back to my apartment, I was glad that I keep things tidy all the time. I turned on the bath water and heater, and looked inside my room for spare clothes.

So I hand her the clothes, and open my closet to pull out the spare futon. When I first moved in, I used the futon as it was easier to carry, but eventually I went back to a bed, and never got rid of the futon. I guess I'm glad I didn't now. Mitsuha goes to the bathroom to freshen up as I change the bed sheets and start getting food ready to cook.

I'm not a very good cook, I tend to keep to the same dishes all the time; curry rice (which we learn in grade school), ginger pork (which I learnt from my mum), and the dish I'm making tonight. Taco rice. Simple and easy.

I put the rice on cook, and pull out the mince put the salsa seasoning on to help flavour the meat for now. I look at the sour cream I have. It's an addition that I really like added to my taco rice, despite it not being in all recipes. I hope Mitsuha is ok with it… I'm not sure why I'm so worked up over cooking now!

As I'm sorting through the food, I hear Mitsuha's muffled voice call out to me, "uh, Taki..." I hear her say.

"Yup?" I call out, I think she mentions the words Shampoo, but I walk over to the bathroom to hear better.

As I turn the corner to the bathroom, I see a sight to behold. Mitsuha, wrapped in a towel, had also come out of the bathroom to call out to me in the kitchen. She had taken her makeup off, and her face was fresh and radiant. Light freckles dotting her cheeks, making her face look super cute. Her shoulder-length dark hair was loose and hung by her sides, and I swore I could smell the sweet scent of her hair...

I violently turn my head away, feeling blood running to my nose. Mitsuha also let out a cute yelp, and darted back inside the bathroom, holding the door closed.

"Uhh, is there anymore shampoo?" Mitsuha calls out from behind the door.

"Uhh… it's under the sink in the bathroom" I call out hastily.

I half grin to myself and half bite my lip, afraid of being called a pervert. I shake my head with a smile as the thought drifts into my head; if she takes a bath, won't I be using the same bath water too? I shake my head violently; pure thoughts only!

I try and will myself, get back to cooking, and try not to daydream!


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Mitsuha

I wake up feeling pretty good. I feel like I have slept the best I have slept in a while. Whilst living alone, my sleep has been really bad, the doctors say I just need more vitamin D or iron in my diet, but I haven't really seen much improvement. I must have been really exhausted yesterday to sleep so well… I hear the sound of sizzling eggs. Did I go back home? Is Yotsuha cooking stuff?

That's right! I remember, I stayed the night at Tachibana-kun's apartment! I feel a little panicked; I hope he doesn't misinterpret anything.

I sit up suddenly, touching my chest as I think of Taki, somehow out of reflex, as if I expected my body to be violated upon waking up… Fortunately, they seem fine...Slowly I remember the events of yesterday; the creepy thin smile of the person called Mystique, the masked person called Jo who was going to…I feel nauseous and give off a shiver. I try to put the thoughts out of my head. I pat the bed around me that I'm sitting on... It's a bed! I realise. It's the first time for me sleeping on a bed… I sniff the sheets; they smell clean enough. How did I get in here? I think to myself. I remember watching random video clips on YouTube and Nico Nico in Taki's lounge room after dinner as I was scared to fall asleep…

Dinner... That was nice though, Taki was really sweet and cooked some Okinawan dish which he called taco rice. Maybe it's more popular in the Tokyo area, but I was glad to try it, even if I wasn't used to eating so much meat normally…Maybe because of growing up in Itomori, I've grown accustomed to eating far more vegetables than most Tokyo people. I recall part of our conversation from last night.

Taki only recently graduated from university after studying architecture. He's still so enthusiastic about work. Even though we're both job searching at the moment, our attitudes feel a little different. I remember when I first finished my college studies, I had a passionate desire to design elegant female dresses. I wanted to make these simple, elegant designs, dresses that Audrey Hepburn's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's would wear… I had my inspiration boards and made a list of my favourite designers...Sometimes I think I spent longer on Pinterest than actually studying. But once graduating, getting work was a lot harder. Unless you already have a name for yourself, the only design work you can find out there are all contract work, and they have very specific guidelines to what they require. The pay is also ridiculously small for those contract positions, so in order to meet rent, I have to work part-time in retail, selling the dresses that I one day hope to make. So in essence, these days, I take what I can get.

Taki is still in his dreaming big stage of job hunting; wanting to make a difference in the world and only work for a company that puts a focus on treating the environment well. I kinda envy and admire his aspirations at the moment. I wish I was still as optimistic about work...

I guess my job at the moment is ok though; I've got a part-time role at a kimono store now. I think helping my grandmother as a child helped me land this position. I help make some of the accessory parts like tassels and measuring customers who come in. It's not great pay, but it allows me to work part-time and meet my rent. I told Sa-chan that I'd design her wedding dress and the bridesmaid dresses. So perhaps it will be something I can add to my portfolio, and perhaps I can move into the bridesmaid dress scene too afterwards. Western style outfits are becoming more popular in Japan for weddings, so I think it's an area of growth.

I see the bedroom door slide open and Taki sheepishly poke his head inside. His hair is still ruffled from bed hair.

"Ah, you're awake", he says, "good morning".

"Good morning,"I greet him back.

"I have breakfast ready now if you want, just eggs, ham, rice and miso soup," he tells me, "so when you're ready feel free to come out to eat" he adds as he closes the door.

"Uhh, Taki" I call out to him, the door opens again.

"Umm... Can I borrow some more clothes as my shirt from yesterday…." I sheepishly ask him as I crawl out of bed to stand up.

Taki freezes for a second then whacks his head, "oh yes! Uhh…" he walks over to his closet, "feel free to grab anything from here. I'm not sure what fits, but they're all clean." He seems pretty flustered over me being here. I really appreciate that though as he's thoroughly reliable and sweet, and I feel that he's trustworthy and not going to take advantage of me.

"Did you move me to your bed last night?" I ask Taki suddenly.

"Uhh, yeah, you fell asleep, so I thought it would be more comfortable if you had a bed to sleep in, instead..." Taki replied.

"Thanks," I say, "actually it's the first time I've slept in a bed... I've always been scared of them, and that I'd somehow fall out of them."

"I don't think I heard any thuds last night, so I think you were fine," Taki responds.

"Yeah, I have a tendency to move around heaps in my futon with my legs hanging out in the morning, but I think the bed was pretty comfortable as I slept so well last night," I tell him.

"That's good, anyways, help yourself to my closet, I'm going to finish washing the dishes," he says as he walks out, seemingly avoiding looking at me. He is a pretty neat and tidy guy... which isn't a bad thing, I think to myself.

His closet is really organised too. I can see his pattern of arrangement instantly; his suit and outerwear hanging up on the right; his t-shirts folded next to his long sleeved shirts and above his pants. I open his drawer containing his underwear and close it again. I don't need to look there, and I have the spare panties I bought from the convenience store yesterday. I look around the room; where did the stuff I buy yesterday go? I notice the plastic bag sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed. Taki is pretty observant and courteous.

As I change, I stand in front of his study table. I look at my body and shudder again thinking about what might have happened to it yesterday. I look on the table and something catches my eye. I reach out to pick up a red braided cord sitting on his table. I swear this could have something I had mine as it looks like the exact braid pattern and colour that I used to make with my grandma… The braid pattern was a really unique one as I had to use one of those old fashion machines in my old house. I get changed quickly and go to living room to ask Taki. I'm pretty excited or intrigued that someone has such a similar braid.

"Uhh, Tachibana-kun", I ask, "that red braid you have in your room?".

"I have no idea where I got it from", he replies almost instantly, "cause I'd really like to buy another one. It looks really cool, that braid pattern. I've kinda been wearing it as a protective charm around my wrist for a number of years now. I dunno, I have no idea how I have it, but I'm really attached to it. Why?" he asks me, "you look a little disappointed."

"No reason," I say, indeed feeling slightly disappointed, "I just use to do a lot of braiding when I was little, and it looked similar to what I used to make," I say.

"Oh really? Perhaps you could show me how to make one next time, as I really like it," Taki asks me.

After breakfast, I tell Taki that I'll head home to my place first. As kind as Taki is in lending me his clothes, I'd rather go home to wear my own ones and I still have some chores at home to do I say.

"Are we meant to be seeing the police again today?" Taki asks me as I tell him my plans.

"Hopefully, Inspector Mori told us that he'll at least give me a call around lunch time to let me know what the plan is, so I want to head home before then at least." I tell Taki.

"What's your phone number.. Uh, um.. I'll give you my phone number" Taki says to me, "So please call me when the policeman calls you. I have LINE too, so you can message me if you want..."

A girl stays over at his place, and he's nervous about asking for phone numbers. I chuckle to myself at how shy he is. We swap contact details and I promise to let him know the details.

"By the way," I say to Taki, "thanks for yesterday. I really don't know what would have happened if you weren't there..," I tell him, wanting to express my gratitude again.

"It's ok," Taki says sombrely, "at least we're safe now. Anyways, give me a call to let me know what's happening. Or if you need to chat or anything," he says.

I thank him and leave towards my home. I use Google Maps to see how to get home. Turns out we don't live that far away from each other.

I get a phone call from Inspector Mori, the policeman from yesterday who took our details, as I get off the train on my way home. He wants us to come into the station as soon as we can. A investigation force has been assembled and they need to find out more information before they go in. He also wanted us to come in to sign something so they can get a warrant to investigate.

I contained my annoyance that the police can't just act and do things efficiently whilst I spoke to him on the phone It seems different to all those cop dramas I see on TV where they always seem to assemble and move out quickly like the Transformers about to go on the move. At least Japanese police are better than those American police I hear on the news, always shooting innocent civilians. I think to myself, the Japanese police aren't that good either, if events did turn out more traumatic, or if I was more badly affected by the ordeal. The police asking me more questions would be terrifying and bad for my health if I had to re-live things again.

I call Taki, and Sayaka on the phone telling them to meet back at the police station now. Sayaka seems strange on the phone, but she says that they'll be there. I rush inside my apartment to get change. I look around my bedroom at the mess of materials strewn about the floor. Thinking back at Taki's room, I tell myself that I will definitely clean my room when I have time.

When I get to the Mita police station, Taki, Sayaka and Tessie are all there. We go inside and I ask to see Inspector Mori, who comes out to greet us and quickly usher us into another interview room before we can say much. There's another two police officers there who introduce their names to us as Detective Takayama and Inspector Teruda. It looks like they are busy and want to get things progressing quickly. I feel glad at this sense of urgency.

"I have the notes that Inspector Mori wrote down for us," Detective Takayama tells us, "I just want to hear a little bit more information before we move out. Once we're done here, we have a van out the back which we'll ask you guys to come with us in. It'll help to have you with us to identify the people as we investigate the premise."

Taki and I nod in agreement, though Sayaka's lips seem to be quivering a bit. I reach out and hold Sayaka's arm. Tessie looks a bit confused or spaced out though.

"Alright, Teshigawara-kun", I understand that you were the first person to make contact with the group called "Arcane Analysts", is this right?" Detective Takayama asks Tessie.

"Huh?" Tessie asks, scratching his head, "when was this?" he asks the detective.

"Oi, don't joke around Tessie, this is serious. Yesterday's events, tell them what happened." I scold Tessie.

"I don't remember anything happening yesterday. I stayed home with Sa-chan yesterday." Tessie retorts. I can't believe this is happening. I know Tessie is a bit of an idiot sometimes, but he can't be that silly to pull one of his pranks now!

"Stop messing around," I'm getting angry, "don't you care what happened to your fiancee?" I shout at him. I feel Taki's hands on me as he pulls me back a little.

Sayaka breaks into tears,

"Didn't we rescue the girls yesterday, Teshigawara-san? You told me about your rugby skills when we broke out of our ropes, which you used on the camera men", Taki implores to Tessie, speaking less aggressively than I did.

"This sounds rather suspicious guys," Inspector Teruda tells us, evidently puzzled at this seeming change of stories.

"I warned them not to be wasting our time yesterday!" Inspector Mori roared, somehow looking rather antsy.

"Did anything happen yesterday, Teshigawara-kun", Detective Takayama demands Tessie, speaking slowly but in a firm voice.

"I don't remember anything?" Tessie declares in protest, "I didn't do anything!"

Taki and I look at each other, something is definitely strange.

"It happened!" Taki and I say at the same time.

"Natori-san", Detective Takayama looks to Sayaka, "what happened to you yesterday?" he asks her.

Sayaka seems too distraught to answer and just sits there sobbing.

"I think we know what's going on now. Look guys, all these psychics and supernatural places are probably all frauds. But you shouldn't come in here making false criminal accusations about them after hearing some bad words from them. Now get out of here before we arrest you guys for lying and wasting the police's time. Especially when we're so busy right now!" Detective Takayama tells us as Inspector Mori walks over to hold the door open for us to leave, his facial expression seething.

We don't have a choice but to leave the police station.

What the heck happened. I stand there next to Taki, both of us stunned unsure on what to do next.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Girl

A rainbow kaleidoscope of colours spin in circles. Dancing like kois in a circular mystical dance around the girl. She is mesmerised.

Where is this she wonders. She turns towards the boy, her eyes glowing. The boy looks back at her, smiling, his eyes seem to tell her to keep watching.

The girl doesn't know how long they watch this spectacle, but she is enraptured by it. She doesn't know if she is lying down or sitting up, or standing or spinning. She doesn't know what time it is, or even if time is going forwards… or backwards. It is neither nighttime nor daytime. But she watches transfixed, with the boy next to her, comforted by his presence.

Eventually a face and body slowly appears from the swirls, a face familiar yet unfamiliar to the girl. It looks like herself... or her grandmother... or perhaps mother the girl excitedly thinks! The girl feels overwhelmed by emotions. It has been many years since she has seen her mother, and many more years since she was able to see mother being able to move.

"I am neither and both your mother and grandmother. I am all the generations," the girl hears a voice coming from all directions, as if reading the girl's thoughts. "I can hear your thoughts, yes. I know what you have gone through too, and I am sorry for not being there for you," the person says sadly.

The girl quickly turns to the boy next to her.

"I have already been acquainted with him. He can hear me, but not as you hear me. He is a good boy, he has done a good job waiting and bringing you here. He does not hear our conversation, I am currently already talking to him actually," the motherly figure says. The girl sees that the boy seems to be absorbed as if listening to the figure as well.

The girl feels overwhelmed, there are so many things that she wants to say, so many things that have happened since… sad things, happy things…

"I haven't left you daughter. And I know what your feelings are and what you want to say," the figure extends further out and walks towards the girl. One of the figure's hand reaches forward and strokes the girl on the head before cradling the girl's head in the figure's arms.

The girl feels a sense of warmth and happiness flow through her body, as if being hugged and stroked by her mother when she a child. The feeling of nostalgia overcomes the girl, and she tries to speak, but no words come out. Let me join you, her eyes plead.

"You are here already with me" the voice says, "we are all here. We are always watching, will be watching, and have already watched."

The girl looks questioningly back at the figure.

"You still have an important task to do. Until you have done so, you cannot join us," the figure tells the girl, "nay, until you have done so, the whole world will not yet be complete."

The girl becomes aware of the boy next to her again. He reaches out his hand towards her, as if offering encouragement. The girl reaches out and takes it. Although she feels no warmth in the hand, she feels a sense of comfort.

The figure smiles, looking at the boy and girl together. The swirling colours stop and slowly form shapes.

"The strands of time have been snagged," the figure tells the boy and girl. The colours move as if illustrating her words, "musubi links and holds the whole world together, but events connected to you both have occurred that has caused the strands to fray. Forces exist; the kami, the mushi, they not only live amongst the threads of musubi, they help weave and thread the strands of time to help maintain world order. But they are clumsy and callous beasts. They use the strands of time to makes a foot path through an ocean, or they flatten a mountains when trying to go past it. When blinded by its desire to repair, they are not aware of the birds or the animals, and they happily devour all that is trampled under their machinations. They are trying to fix things again, the events of past and the future are becoming the same, a loop or snag has occurred, which will either be fixed by them, or by you."

The boy and girl look at each other. They somehow understand.

"I think you both know that you are incomplete. Your lack of voice, you may have already noticed, being just one part" the figure tells them. "I don't need to say much, you both know what you need to do; follow yourselves, fix the world."

The girl and the boy nods. Despite her desire to remain with the warmly figure, the girl knows that there is now a purpose for her existence here. Despite the cryptic words, the girl knows that there is a task that she must do.

She feels the boy's hand grip her hand a give a little squeeze. She looks at the boy. They both are connected and involved together.

The lights swirl again, the boy and girl watches the lights as they slowly close their eyes and fall into dream...


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Taki

"What's wrong", Tsukasa asks me, "you don't look so good."

"It's nothing", I tell my friend since high school.

"If married life has taught me one thing, it's that I can understand facial expressions better now," Tsukasa tells me, "because despite what they say, their bodies mean something totally different to their words," he sighs as he adjusts his glasses.

"Plus," he says, "it's rare that I have to visit your apartment instead of us going to a cafe. Shinta not being in Tokyo anymore isn't an excuse."

Tsukasa has been my friend since high school. Together with Shinta, we used to hang out almost every day after school before we had cram school or I had to go to work. Even during university we all kept close, meeting up at least every month. He's probably the person who knows me the best, and since Shinta moved interstate, Tsukasa and I have continued to keep our meeting-up tradition alive. Though he's married now, to a former colleague of mine; one of my sempai's from my part-time job in high school. Our meetups have been getting a little harder to coordinate. At least our relationship's still close… After all the commotion of the past few days, I completely forgot that I was meant to be meeting with Tsukasa today. As a consequence of me forgetting, he came to my apartment and is now sitting in my lounge interrogating me. I'm grateful to Tsukasa though as it seems that he makes more of an effort to remain close with me, than I make an effort to remain close to him.

"This is my only day off during the week, and I have plenty of other things that I could be doing, including spending time with Miki, so I don't have time to wait for you or to follow you on a soul-searching mountain climbing trip to a remote town for you to tell me what's wrong," Tsukasa lectures me with his long sentence.

Since working, he's become a lot more authoritative. I'm not sure if it's an effect from his work, or if he's much meeker at home and so feels the need to be more bossy when he's away from his wife, but at least he's still Tsukasa enough for me to still be friends.

"Unless that remote town has a cheap golf course," Tsukasa rambles on, "my golf score is really bad, and I need to do better the next time I play with the managers..." Tsukasa has always been bad at sports, and now with his work, the culture there seems to require him to at least play golf with them on the weekends.

'You're rambling now," I tell Tsukasa, laughing at him. I don't understand corporate salaryman lifestyle, but it sounds frightening having your personal life so connected with work, "I'm confused about something", I decide to tell everything to Tsukasa.

I explain the situation to Tsukasa, on how I met Mitsuha on the train, how Tessie and Sayaka got involved. Tsukasa just nods through this, as if a doctor waiting to diagnose his patient. I continue about the psychic testing, and how they ended up being crooks who tried to kidnap us and take videos of abusing the girls. How we went to the police, and how Tessie somehow can't remember anything and the police has called off the case.

"I'm confused," I tell Tsukasa, "one part of me is telling me to stay away and avoid this whole situation. I've only just met Mitsuha and the other two. I'm older now, and this isn't like some manga or I can afford to go on some sort of escapade. I should keep my head down and focus on trying to work… But, it's not right what those people did, and I don't understand why Teshigawara…"

"Hmm, I get the feeling that you're confused," Tsukasa tells me.

"Shut up, I tell him, you're a quack doctorm" as I can tell he's trying to tease me.

"What do you think about this girl, Mitsuha-san?" he asks me, "you seem close since you're not using her surname nor any polite honorific."

"I don't know, she's older than me. Funny, pretty, but we haven't talked that much and we're in totally different life situations right now, and she's a country girl too," I tell Tsukasa,

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with an older partner, and I think you're trying to find any excuse to make it sound negative as I'm pretty sure, you prefer the non-Tokyo highlife sort of girl anyway," Tsukasa tells me, "but hmm…if knowing anything about you, somewhere during high school, you changed. You became more proactive at doing things, and unwilling to sit still on things. So I don't think it's possible for you to sit still anymore and we should do something about it."

"We?" I ask Tsukasa,

Suddenly my phone, which had been sitting on my table rings, interrupting Tsukasa's reply.

I see Mitsuha's name flash on the screen before Tsukasa quickly snatches my phone up before I'm able to react.

"05410, you've given her a custom ringtone already, I like that song too," he tells me before answering the phone, referring to the music on the phone that I had assigned Mitsuha's name. I remembered from our first meeting at Suwa Shrine that it was a song we both enjoyed by the band, so I used that as her ringtone.

"Hello, this is Tachibana Taki's friend Tsukasa Fuji. Taki's sitting right in front of me, but I have a favour to ask and I was wondering if you had time today for all of us to meet up," Tsukasa speaks quickly, as I'm leaning across the table desperately trying to wrench the phone from his hands.

"Oh, you're near his place already?" Tsukasa speaks, sounding surprised. He quickly pulls the phone to the side, and turns to me accusingly, "how does she know where you live already?"

"Great," he continues, turning back to the conversation with Mitsuha, "please come to his place, if you remember it, I have a great plan for us to enact now," Tsukasa instructs Mitsuha.

"I am looking forward to seeing you soon and working together," Tsukasa says as he hangs up the phone.

"What plan?" I ask Tsukasa worried.

"Don't worry, just wait" he says, "In the meantime, give me some paper so I can plan this better," he tells me, already working in overdrive.

I give up and do as he says as I search for paper and a pen in my apartment. I hear him on the phone to Okudera sempai, "Hhi dear, sorry, I'll be at Taki's place a bit longer. I'll definitely make it up to you, something very important has come up, but I'll explain it all later. I think we may have closure over why we went on our trip in Gifu soon." Hearing Tsukasa makes me remember that escapade we did back in school.

I barely remember much about the trip we made there, just little bits of it. I think I was searching for something, maybe a teenage soul finding exercise or angst drive runaway. I just remember the train trip down, and then looking at books in a library, some bright lights and then a train trip home by myself… It's all really vague still.

"I love you too," I hear Tsukasa's voice whisper much quieter as he hangs up the phone. I put the pen and paper on the table in front of him grinning at his subservience to Okudera-sempai.

"Thanks, now go clean up your apartment before your friend arrives," he instructs me as he starts writing on the piece of paper.

I walk back into my room, to rearrange things. I look at my bed, Mitsuha slept in that bed! I reminisce. She was surprisingly quite light when I picked her up to move her to my bed after she fell asleep. I guess she was either exhausted or a really heavy sleeper to not wake up as I carried her. I think you need to learn to be a heavy sleeper in Tokyo with all the city sounds that gets emitted. I walk to my desk and see my red braided wrist band. I'm not actually sure if it's a wristband or not, but it fits around my wrist well, so I like it. I pick it up and put on for good luck when I hear a knock on the door.

It's Mitsuha, I walk quickly to the front door to let her in, though when I get there, I already see Tsukasa opening the door and introducing himself to her.

After the brief introductions, Tsukasa sits us down.

"Ok everyone, we are beginning operation 'Infiltration'," Tsuakasa declares as he stands in front of both of us like a lecturer.

"What on earth is 'Infiltration?" I ask Tsukasa, "it's such a hard word to pronounce!"

"It's an English word," Tsukasa tells us, "it means to sneak inside somewhere."

Mitsuha and I look at each other.

"Taki has told me your plight with the police and your friend Teshigawara," Tsukasa continues, "the only choice we have now, is to break inside their building again."

"Ehh? Why do we have to go back there? Plus isn't that dangerous?" I ask.

"Sure, but you mentioned that there were camera people there, is that right Mitsuha?" Tsukasa turns to Mitsuha and she nods.

"Good, if we can sneak inside the premise again and find where they keep their memory cards or video tapes, we can steal their recording data. This data would then work as evidence to show the police so they will believe you, and to help arrest them. It has to be video of you guys too as you would own the copyright to that video and it won't be theft. And perhaps if we show the images to Teshigawara-san, it may return his memories. I'm not sure why he's lost his memories, perhaps he had amnesia from the shock, but surely this is something we can try." Tsukasa declares, proud with himself as he acts like a police tactics squad leader, lawyer and doctor all in one.

"Ok, but they know our faces, how do we sneak inside?" Mitsuha asks, it seems like she's already on board. She is quite a tough girl, I think to myself.

"That's why this is operation 'Infiltration'", Tsukasa declares, pulling out his piece of paper. The english word 'Infiltration' is neatly written at the top of the page.

Tsukasa grins manically at us, pointing at the page, "so, here's what we're going to do guys, listen carefully…"


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Boy / Girl

The boy opens his eyes. He looks to his side and sees the girl next to him. He feels relieved. He had waited a long time for her. He doesn't have to be trapped in an endless loop anymore watching the village be destroyed.

The girl looks at the boy, eyes brimming. He smiles at her. They stand up and look around. It is morning.

Slowly they set off walking. Up the path to the forest, out of the forest to the edge of the cliff overlooking the village below.

They stop for a moment to look at the desolation below. It's strange, the village is but isn't there anymore. The village is dead; littered with debris, craters, and rubble. But the village is alive; moss grows, overtaking stone walls, trees spring up supplanting the place where power-lines once stood. The town is painted, awash with green and browns from the previous drab grey. The girl lingers a little longer, looking at the village below with trepidation. The boy pulls her hand as if telling her to not dwell on it. What has happened, has happened, we'll see the damage when we get down there.

They walk through the mountain forest, slowly descending. There is much wildlife here, as wild rodents and birds seem to dart from their resting burrows as the two people walk down. As they walk, they walk in silence, absorbing the scenery and seeming serenity. Their walk almost seems playful; the girl catches her feet in a tangle of vines and almost falls over. The boy manages to grab her hand preventing her from falling. The boy jumps on a rock as if to impress the girl. The rock is loose and the boy wobbles precariously before jumping down on the ground almost falling over in a heap. As they walk, everything seems to be forgotten; the girl's face is filled with mirth, the boy smiling with contentment.

They continue through the forest, slowly descending until they fall out of the trees to arrive at a shrine. It is a sizeable shrine given the population the village once held. The girl seems to know the grounds well and leads the boy around. The concrete ground is torn up, cracks scattered throughout looking as if miniature fjords and valleys had been added to create a mini ecosystem. The toro stone lanterns that line the main walkway have collapsed over; cracked and lying strewn on the floor. The water purification basin is cracked too. It has long dried up with desiccated algae and moss sitting in the place of where water once flowed. The metal dippers that sit next to the basin are also rusted; wooden handles decaying and crumbling.

The girl takes the boy yet further around the shrine grounds. The grounds are covered with scattered rectangular wooden plaques, each plaque bearing a written wishes of the village's residents. The girl reaches down and picks one up to read,

 _I want to be a handsome Tokyo boy in my next life_

The boy and girl continues on their walk up to the honden, wanting to look at the main shrine. They get there and look up at it with amazement; the structure is untouched. The roof and pillars stand strong and majestic. The boy and girl walks up to the shrine, they take turns to shake the rope, clap their hands and bow their heads. They say a little prayer each to whoever may reside inside.

They continue walking out of the shrine; sad looking stone lions sits at the entrance to the shrine, guarding the crumpled red tori gates. They appear to be waiting, like a lonely dog waiting for its master, for someone to return and rebuild the site.

They progress carefully down the steps. There is still a footpath to descend despite it being mostly torn up. It seems that the higher grounds of the shrine allowed it to not suffer as much damage as the village it services.

As they leave the shrine grounds the girl takes charge again leading the direction to the next destination. The boy follows behind, trying to keep up. They walk along the torn-up road, taking detours over fallen trees, abandoned cars, collapsed buildings. They crawl over craters, carefully skirting around the rancid puddles that have collected in many of the craters. Papers and food packets litter the streets. They see small rodent and squirrel nibbles decorating the fallen trash.

Finally they approach a house. It is mostly collapsed, the second story window on the left still stands defiant. The stone fence at the front of the house has only one pillar still standing. Trying to stand stoic at the entrance-way, feebly offering a welcome to any visitor who may happen to stop by. It has a bronze plaque still on it, in black writing the name 'Miyamizu' is engraved on. The girl hangs in front of the front gate, reading the family name plaque but too nervous to step inside. The boy enters first, encouraging the girl along, assuring her that there are no unwanted sights here. They look through the rubble, not really sure what they are looking for. But somehow they know that they can find something of use here.

They go through each section of the house as according to what they remember the floor plans were. The house looks a lot smaller without the walls and furniture inside. They finally come across a once regal looking chair tipped over on its side. The desk it sat under is broken, with the side returns collapsed diagonally in a sort of tepee pile. A desk sign saying 'mayor' sits on the ground as overseeing some rubble but looking lonely. They look through the papers that is scattered on the floor and inside the drawers. One of the drawers is locked still, so the boy picks it up and smashes it on the ground, freeing in a waterfall of whiteness, loose pages.

The girl looks through the papers, words of 'amalgamation' titles some pages in bold black font. Photos of faces with names below it fill other sheets, listing their names, departments and town province they belong to. Below these character sheets are more pieces of paper; photos of women and their names, drinking establishments visited, details that don't look officious, but rather more unsavoury. The girl puts those pieces of papers down. It doesn't look useful. She doesn't want to see them or draw any conclusions from them.

The boy walks over the girl holding a piece of paper, waving it proudly at her. The piece of paper has some hastily scrawled writing on it. It is an address. In the next city, the main city, which was not far away from the village...by car.

The boy and girl nods, there's not much else that they can do. There is also little else in the town for them and it will be a long walk. Hopefully there are still road signs to lead the way. They leave the house, the girl giving one last look and a short bow saying that she'll be heading off. As they walk down the street out of the town, the girl feels a little nostalgic and a little sense irony about being sad to leave the village she once hated.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Mitsuha

We begin our 'operation' by catching the train back to the 'infiltration site'. I think Taki's friend Tsukasa is treating this more of an adventure than something serious. Though, to be honest, as long as there is a positive outcome, I'm ok.

"So make sure you wait downstairs in a place that is not too noisy. You have to listen closely to my conversation to work out where they keep their recording tapes. I don't know the building like you guys would, so I won't be very helpful to you in trying to warn you where people are or aren't. I'll try give a signal though to say you can go inside but if I can't give you a signal, you'll have to carefully gauge the situation for yourself…" Tsukasa preps Taki and me as we ride the train. Tsukasa Fuji seems like a very… thorough sort of person.

"Fuji-san, how are you going to distract the entire organisation so that we can get in?" I ask Tsukasa. I have to admit, even though I'm going along with this, I am a little sceptical of how this will all play out.

"I have an idea, it may not be too easy...but I'm sure it'll work. I'll be pretending to be an interested 'supplier', I'm sure they're always looking for ways to expand their pool of people to abuse," Tsukasa hypothesises to us.

"But you're a guy?" Taki asks him, "how will they be interested in you?"

"Yes, I'm a guy, so they won't be interested in me for my body, but interested in me for what I have. As, miraculously, I somehow have amazing access to beautiful girls who would be willing to do psychic testing, and be unsuspecting of what will happen. If it's a last resort… I do have photos on my phone too that I can use as 'proof' as well… " Tsukasa nods.

"Hey, you better keep those photos hidden from Miki," Taki warns his friend.

"It's ok," Tsukasa say, turning a bit red, "the photos are of only one girl, and Miki would be ok with me having those photos since she's the one who posed... Uh... and they are only for use in extreme emergency….Look I project-manage the sales team at my company, so I have ample experience at doing a sales pitch. I will have no problem convincing them," Tsukasa tells us confidently.

I don't want to imagine what sort of photos Tsukasa has on his phone. Are all guys perverts?

We get off the train and make our way over to where this whole adventure started; to the stairway next to the innocuous looking Lawsons. We prep Fuji-san on the location and head into Lawsons to buy ourselves a drink for ourselves as we wait.

"A stake-out always needs food and drinks right?" I tell Taki.

I pick up a calpis whilst Taki pick up an oolong tea...

We had surveyed the area on our phones before arriving. On the next street behind is an open playground space. It is very close to the building so we decide to wait there. Fuji-san has dialled Taki on his phone so we can listen to what is happening. We sit down on the top of a ramp-like wall and Taki pulls out his headphones and gives me an ear bud. Our idea is that if Tsukasa keeps his phone on call with us, we can understand the situation as it arises and then use our discretion on whether to go inside to take the video recording tape, or if Fuji-san is 'captured', we'll be able to either call the police again or make a scene to get him rescued.

"Hi, I'm Yamada, self-entrepreneur," we hear Tsukasa talk quickly, it seems like he's chosen a pseudonym and fake profession to use, "I was hoping to have a meeting with Mr Takeshi.

Taki had told Tsukasa that that 'Takeshi' was the name he had remembered at the reception area before passing out. I didn't remember that name, only remembering feeling really sleepy and passing out on Taki's shoulders, and then waking up to see the masked men and the person called Mystique… I shiver again thinking about that experience. We thought that Tsukasa should try and run with asking for Takeshi as Taki felt like he had appeared as someone rather important and likely the head of the organisation.

We hear the receptionist speak, "I believe that Mr Takeshi is in a meeting. I'll have a look to see if he's available though, could I know what the purpose of your intended meeting is?"

"Yes, I have a business proposal for him. A mutual associate of ours have explained the nature of the 'psychic readings' to me. See, I am in the unique position of managing an entertainment industry enterprise. Such position has given me the fortuitous position of knowing a large proportion of individuals that would be easily suggestible to having so-called readings undertaken… Now, I would love to continue this chat with such a fine lady as yourself explaining my plan, but perhaps we could do that tonight, after I first have a conversation with your boss?" I hear Tsukasa speak on the phone. He is trying to sound 'suave' on the phone.

"Oh goodness, does he think he's James Bond?" I hear Taki mutter to me.

"Let's just see what happens," I tell Taki, hoping that Taki doesn't actually have a sleazy friend.

The receptionist seems to have paused,

"Alright, please wait by the couch over there for a moment, and I'll have someone see you shortly. And sorry, I'm taken already."

Remembering the receptionist's face makes me angry; does she know what the organisation does? How can she allow fellow girls be abused when she sits and waits and drugs people?

Taki looks at me concerned,

"You ok? You look really tense," he says to me.

"Ah, sorry, I was day dreaming," I tell him,

"By the way, sorry that all this is happening now. I even didn't get to speak to you on phone earlier when you called when Tsukasa interrupted," Taki apologises to me.

We hear the sound of a tea tray rattling,

"This is houji-cha," we hear the receptionist say, pouring the tea.

Taki and I swing our heads to face each other at the same time, gloriously crashing our heads together and yanking out our ear pieces as we both yell "don't drink it!"

We both look at each in horror and amusement as we frantically try and put the earbuds back into our ears to know what is happening.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to spill it," we hear Tsukasa say, apologising to the receptionist.

Taki and I look at each other relieved. He didn't drink the tea.

"It's fine, I was just feeling lonely in my room so I was wondering if you were free just to chat or go out for a drink or something," I reply Taki continuing our previous conversation, "your friend Fuji-san is caring though, even though he's so full-on, it shows that he cares about you. I guess it's a role reversal from the other day though, when Tessie dragged you into his plan," I tell Taki, also feeling guilty that I had gotten him involved with everything. "Sorry about that," I add.

"No, I'm glad I met you to be honest. It's strange though, I don't get what happened to Teshigawara, did he bump his head or something or was there something else in the tea causing memory loss? Did you have a chance to call him or Sayaka-san?" Taki asks me.

"No, I haven't," I reply, "I've tried calling both of their phones, but they're not picking up. Knowing Sa-chan, if she hasn't forgotten her memory too, I think she'll be really distraught now. Especially if Tessie's being uncaring. That's also why I'm so keen to try fix things to try help her." It does seem really strange and mysterious. I want to get the video to show Tessie, I know he cares deeply about Sayaka, so hopefully showing the video will trigger him so he doesn't hurt Sayaka more.

We hear ruffling sounds as Tsukasa sits up,

"I see you didn't like our tea," we hear a man's voice speaks through the headphones. Taki's head perks up; he recognises that voice,

"I'm Takeshi, nice to meet you Mr Yamada."

Taki looks at me. This is the person in charge.

"I hear you have a proposition for us," Takeshi asks Tsukasa, continuing his introduction.

"Yes, though first I'd like to find out more about your operations. Is this the venue that you use to do your _testing_? Tsukasa asks, "if possible, I'd like to see the studios and the production labs in order to ascertain how high quality your works are." Tsukasa speaks, sounding rather cocky.

"Aren't you being a little presumptuous? I don't know anything about a 'production' or 'studio', but unless you have a real business proposition, I will have to let my colleagues next to me show you the exit." Takeshi replies coolly.

"Ok, fine. I won't beat around the bush, and I'll say it out straight. My understanding of your business model is that you offer 'psychic' testing. However, you also use it as a front to take graphic adult videos. You need the element of shock and surprise for your viewers for these type of videos, as there are too many paid actor ones, and the actors are either too expensive or not 'real' enough. Amateurs who are looking for pocket money and are willing just don't seem scared enough too. Getting models is hard work, not every girl who walks in here is pretty and film-worthy. But I have a solution for you that I think you will find hard to pass up, but if you would rather your brutes throw me out the door, I can take my leave. it's up to you." Tsukasa continues his act and bargains with the person called Takeshi.

"Stand back guys, alright I'll listen. I'll show you the premise as you tell us your wonderful solution. Let's go upstairs," Takeshi tells Tsukasa.

I look at Taki, it appears that we're both impressed by Tsukasa.

"He never used to be able to talk that well when we were in school!" Taki tells me in awe.

"I own a number of large establishments around the Ikebukuro district. As you are aware, the demographics of Ikebukuro is a largely younger, but adult audience. My enterprise hires a lot of people and I get plenty of requests for interviews." Tsukasa pauses his explanation to ask a question, "ah so these are the tables and ropes? Do you have different backdrops or backgrounds that you use too? I can't imagine changing to a different venue is very easy to do?" He must be at the location where we were trapped before.

Takeshi's reply is muffled and we can't hear too well.

"Ah, this is pretty impressive, so you just slide them at the back of these table to change the scene. Where's the camera equipment?" Tsukasa asks again before continuing his pitch, "so as I was saying, I have lots of wonderful girls asking me for interviews, but unfortunately they are more looks than any sense of competency at work. Though, what made me realise I was sitting on a treasure chest, was that their requests for interviews often emphasised more outwardly things than inwardly things on their resume, if you understand what I'm saying. I received some… stunning photos accompanying their rirekosho's. See, I pay my staff well, and generally the work isn't too unreasonable and difficult. I also have a reputation of looking after my staff, so it's easy to have lots of applicants. So I had the realisation of how much of a waste it was having these beautiful girls go to waste."

As I listen, my blood rises a bit, hearing Tsukasa speak so nonchalantly about women.

"Then the idea struck me, I could harvest their talent by conducting a thorough interview of them. I say that I require a psychic testing as I'm superstitious and want to know if there is any incidents in the future when hiring, and thus, I send the girls to you. We avoid legal issues as they have volunteered to come here and if they are serious about having a job then they won't complain anyway."

"I see," we hear Takeshi say, "what sort of financials were you expecting? Commission or single fees?"

"How about we discuss that after you show me around?" Tsukasa says.

We hear a door open, "anyways, this is where the equipment is stored. Our ropes, knives, candles, and other device... We don't keep our cameras here, they're kept with the studio, we hire some really good DSLR cameras as the focus and zoom is better than a normal camcorder, and they're a bit expensive to kept here... and this room," we hear a door slam, "is where we keep unwanted guests…"

"Now, Mr Yamada, if that is even your real name, we want you to put your money where your mouth is. Call one of the girls you claim wants an interview and tell her to come here now. Otherwise, we can show you first hand what sort of torture we are able to do..."

We hear Tsukasa gulp,

"Sure thing… let me just get my phone to call one up. I'll show you a photo to of her too…" we hear Tsukasa say, less confidently before we hear the phone call click dead.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter14: Boy and Girl

They had been walking all night and into the morning, following the moonlit road delineators towards their destination. They had seen small pieces of encouragements as they walked on their slow journey. First was seeing the barricades that sealed off the town from the rest of the Japan; knowing that they had passed the barrier and are now entering into human civilisation. Second was seeing the first streetlights along a sealed road; lit-up like lanterns guiding them forward.

The rumble and whoosh of the first trucks passing them felt like they were being cheered and egged on by giant spectators. It was a marathon, but they felt motivated.

The boy and girl kept walking along the road, listening out for any more vehicles. They were hoping that with the morning sun slowly creeping in, they would be able to flag a passing vehicle and get a ride into the city. But the first, second and each subsequent car that came all whooshed past them without stopping.

As morning took light and people started going about their daily business, the boy and girl decided to find where their location was and what their next directions were to the next town. Perhaps when they got to the next town, they would have a chance to catch a bus or grab a lift from someone going the same direction. So far, each town passed had been fast asleep and unstirring through the night.

As they made their way into town, they looked around. It was a small village; the town centre existed on both sides of the main road. A few large shops presided over the town; a second-hand book shop, a convenience store, a family restaurant and a supermarket. The shops stood as if custodians of the town.

There should be someone in one of these stores that could help, the boy and girl thought.

At first, they thought that the townsfolk were just rude; too busy in their morning commute to stop and help. Each person they met would ignore their waves and pleas for assistance and walk past them. Only when they arrived at a convenience store that the reality of their existence dawned on them. When they walked to the doors of the convenience store, the automatic doors wouldn't open no matter how much they walked and jumped and stood in front of the sensors. There was no 'push' button like most other doors either so that they couldn't get inside. How strange they thought, the staff clerk only seemed peer at the door and have a confused look when they tried knocking. Then they looked on the ground.

They had no shadow. The boy and girl looked at each other. It was as if they did not even exist.

The boy held the girl's hand. At least they had each other?

Whether not perturbed or acting unperturbed the girl took the boy's hand and dragged him forwards. They kept walking until they saw a petrol station. The girl had an idea.

She climbed onto the back of a pick-up truck and motioned for the boy to get on too. 'This would be a lot faster travelling,' the girl thought. Hopefully it would be in the right direction, but somehow the girl felt like luck or perhaps fate was on her side right now.

As they waited for the driver to begin moving, the girl stretched herself out along the back tray of the ute to make herself as comfortable as possible. It had taken such a long time walking already; she was looking forward to the free ride. The boy stood more nervously, holding onto the top hand rail, so he could look out to see the road signs.

As the truck pulled away and the looked at the surrounds the girl felt pretty confident that the direction they were heading was correct; in this area, all the towns connected up and all the road led through Gifu anyway. The boy was less confident however, as he had rarely gone out of the city experiencing the vast distances that would be travelled between country towns.

They rode the vehicle for what felt like an hour or two. It was a relatively peaceful ride; the girl would stick her face into the wind, enjoying the wind whipping against her face. She began to understand why dogs seemed to love doing the same. The boy also eventually eased up once he saw enough street signs guiding to their destination.

Eventually, as they rode, they saw the Nagara river. The girl tugged on the boy's sleeves; they were close to the city now. The boy had been pensively looking out of the truck watching the scenery change from serene river banks and pristine forest into artificial canals and concrete jungle. The girl motioned to the boy; they had to be prepared to get off as they were in the city now. So this is Gifu, the boy thought. It would have been nice to stay here longer to sightsee around the city and try the kei-chan chicken.

After a while, the girl nodded at the boy. The boy nodded back, ready. As the car slowed down to stop at a traffic light, they hopped off the truck quickly and scurried to the sidewalk. They walked for another half hour or so until the boy saw a sign he had been looking out for. Pointing the sign out to the girl, the girl nodded and took charge walking to the Gifu municipal council. The boy followed behind the girl towards the municipal building.

As they arrived, they looked up at the building they were going to enter; it was a lot bigger than what the girl was expecting. The building was split into three different sections, and she was unsure on which building to go to. The boy put his hand on the girl's shoulder, he'll take charge. They walked into the entrance as the boy read the signboard. After confirming, the boy walked to a different building on the west side, and walked down a long corridor. Eventually they came to a sign. 'Archives' the sign read. This was where they wanted to be.

The boy was glad; they still had paper records of the citizens. He was pretty sure the city he was from had converted to solely electronic records, and in their physical state, he wasn't sure they'd be able to access those files. The boy looked and the naming system; it was sorted by gojuon order. That would make it easier. He moved forward and began looking through the files and cabinets, 'Pe, 'Po…'Ma…'Mi!', the boy and girl came to the section they were looking for…'Miyamizu!' they found the right family name, but with each entry they looked at, the girl shook her head. It wasn't the right Miyamizu…

The boy, not being disheartened look for, 'Te' and 'Na', but the girl also shook her head, it was not the right Teshigawara or Natori either… they didn't seem to have the entries they were looking for.

The boy and girl looked at each other in disappointment. The girl sat down on the floor, back leaning against the bookcases. The boy paced up and down, thinking as to what else they could do. We walked towards the window and looked at the streetscape outside. It was still early morning.

Maybe there was somewhere else to look, he thought as he saw the streetlights turn off on the street.

He turned around to make another circle of pacing. And then he saw it. At the end of the room was another sign; 'Relocation Settlements' the category read. The boy walked quickly towards it; Itomori' read another cabinet. With excitement he rifled through the folders till he found 'Miyamizu'. This was what they were looking for. He raced back to the girl, holding the file on hand.

The girl looked up at the boy, as she read the folder, her face changed from a look of defeat to one of motivation again. They flicked through the folder, a name, address, and photo was there. This was it!

They knew an address now, and it wouldn't be much longer that they would have to stay in this form.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Taki

Mitsuha and I look at each other, holding the earbuds to our ears, hoping in vain that we find out more information.

I hold the phone in my hand, gripped tightly and staring intently at it as if it could somehow work a miracle. _What do we do now?_ I wonder to myself. I am wracked by indecision.

"Come on, let's go," Mitsuha shouts at me as she jumps to her feet. I'm jolted by her suddenness.

"Ww..wwhat are we going to do?" I ask her nervously,

"I didn't think you were this indecisive when you saved me," she teases me, "lets just try cause a commotion, maybe Tsukasa can escape from the commotion we cause."

I'm still unsure about going in without a plan, last time when we rescued Mitsuha and Sayaka, it was more out of necessity and an opportunity arising than me planning a rescue or escape... I try and calm myself to think of another plan but am unable to think of anything else or any other plan. I follow Mitsuha. Hopefully she'll have a better idea on what to do. We race out of the park to where Tsukasa was being held captive and bump into a familiar face.

"Okudea-sempai!" I cry in surprise.

"Ah, Taki-kun, you're here," Okudera-sempai greets me, "where's my useless husband now?"

Mitsuha looks at me. I look at Mitsuha and Okudera and take a deep breath. I'm not sure how to explain the situation.

"Tell me the quick story, I'll work out the rest," Okudera says to me, somehow catching on to the urgency of the situation.

"Umm…" I start saying, unsure how to start.

"Fuji is inside pretending to be a pimp for illegal videos disguising as psychic testing. We were listening in on his actions when the call died. I think you are meant to be an unsuspecting client. Fuji is helping us retrieve a video from them to use as evidence for police," Mitsuha blurts out.

"Thanks… maybe that was a bit too confusing and I won't work out the rest… Something sounds crazy, but I'll ask questions later, in short, I have to go inside right?" Okudera cuts to the point and asks Mitsuha.

"Yup," Mitsuha replies, hanging her head.

"Ok! Wish me luck!", Okudera tells us, "by the way this one's a keeper, Taki-kun," she tells me smiling.

"Lets catch up properly when this is over," she tells Mitsuha as she walks towards the stairway, "and call me Miki," she says before disappearing inside.

"Wait," I cry out to Okudera. Okudera pokes her head to look at me, "Tsukasa's name is 'Yamada'," I warn her.

Okudera gives me a nod and disappears inside.

A short while later, I feel the phone in my hand vibrate. It's Okudera.

"Hello?" I reply.

I hear muffled footsteps instead and the sound of a door opening. She must have called me so we can listen in to what's going on.

Mitsuha and I walk back to the park to wait.

"Yamada-san," we hear Okudera's voice, almost as if exaggerating Tsukasa's fake name, "thank you for this opportunity you have given me to interview with you. I didn't expect to be meeting you here."

"Ah well yes, thank you for coming in. We have had an urgent requirement for a new personnel to join the team, and you were on my shortlist for potentials. But as you may know, a person on paper could be wonderful... but something unforeseen or unexpected could happen that ruins that employment. So, call me a bit superstitious, but I like to have a psychic test done for all my new employees to see if the medium can see any trouble that may occur in the future," we hear Tsukasa say to Okudera.

"Here are some forms to fill out," we hear Takeshi's voice speak, "my name is Takeshi and I work for Arcane Analysts. It is nice to meet you."

We hear Okudera scribble on the form,

"I'm just going to get the room set-up and call our psychic specialists now. Mr Yamada would you also care to step outside with me and let Ms Okudera relax for a little while," we hear Takeshi ask Tsukasa.

Mitsuha and I listen in rapt in attention to the unfolding events. We hear the sounds of Takeshi and Tsukasa leaving the room with only Okudera sitting on the couch by herself.

"Sheesh, these meteorites are really bad," we hear Okudera mumble under her breath. It appears she's also watching TV.

"Hi miss, here is some tea to drink whilst you wait if you would like," we hear another female voice tell her. It's the receptionist lady.

"Thank you very much," we hear Okudera say.

"My throat's pretty parched actually, and I'm nervous about what this psychic testing involves," we hear Okudera tell the receptionist, sounding a bit skittish.

Mitsuha and I look at each other, nervous about the tea in front of Okudera. I try yelling loudly in the phone, "Okudera! okudera!….". I look up, noticing some kids who are playing in the playground look up at and stare at us funny.

"Shhh…" we hear Okudera say quietly.

"Don't drink the…" I start, but it's too late as we hear her take a large sip of the tea.

"Ooh, what sort of tea is this?" we hear Okudera ask the receptionist, "it tastes different to normal houji-cha…"

I get up to move, but Mitsuha holds me back.

"Just wait…" she tells me.

"But I thought we had to move…" I protest, "you were all gung-ho just before!"

"Let's just move closer… we should wait to see what Fuji-san does," Mitsuha cautiously says.

We move closer towards to building again, waiting to see what to do.

We hear the door burst open.

"Miki!" we hear Tsukasa's voice cry out in alarm.

"You sound shocked," we hear Takeshi's voice. "You also seem quite close to her to use her first name. Are you sure you're ok with what's going to happen?" Takeshi asks Tsukasa.

They were back now. It feels a bit surreal, hearing the same actions that would have happened to us a few days ago only.

"Ah, yeah… I was just surprised the drugs worked so quickly... haha…" Tsukasa feigns a laugh as he tries to get back into character.

"Should I help you carry her?" Tsukasa asks.

"Ha, I just organise things, I don't do the heavy lifting." Takeshi says.

"By the way, where do you do the video editing? I've always been curious since it's not the sort of material you'd want to give to any studio to process…" Tsukasa asks.

"Ah, that's just downstairs. It's a legitimate processing business downstairs, but we need to make sure everything is private so we make sure we leave our 'material' in a separate section for processing," Takeshi says. His voice sounds a lot more merry now, perhaps satisfied by Tsukasa's actions.

I look at Mitsuha, we have to get inside the video processing place on level two. Hopefully it'll still be there.

We hear the sound of clothes being ruffled. Okudera is being picked up.

"Uh, where do go from here? And do we need to move her now?" Tsukasa asks.

"Of course, before she wakes up," we hear Takeshi say, "let me just call my men over."

"FUJI! GRUNT IF YOU CAN HEAR US" Mitsuha yells out suddenly. I look in bewilderment at Mitsuha, didn't she just say to wait?

"What are you…" I begin to ask Mitsuha before she silences me with a sharp finger to her lips.

I stay silent, and we listen to the headphone... and then hear a grunt from Fuji.

"Ah she weighs more than she looks haha…uurrhjjj" Tsukasa says with another strangled grunting sound.

"WE'RE COMING UP" Mitsuha yells before pulling me up back into the place.

We race up the stairs. We go to open the door at level two that reads 'Magic Motion Videos'. Mitsuha goes to open the door before I pull her arm to stop her.

"Let me try something first," I say before I open the door and enter.

I step through the door and see an empty reception table fronting a small room with a single desk and computer. A single person is sitting at a computer, he looks up at me, with a somewhat annoyed expression as if I'm interrupting him.

"I'm from upstairs," I say, "I just need to check one of the videos we made," I try to saw nonchalantly.

"Ah, they're over in that pile there," he points to a pile of memory cards sitting in a tray on a shelf.

"Cheers," I say as I walk over to the shelf.

"Hang on," the guy stands up and starts walking towards me, "Do you work upstairs… wait, I think I've seen your face from the failed video... "

Suddenly Mitsuha bursts into the room. The man look at Mitsuha stunned. I look at the man, he looks at me. We're both frozen in our places. Mitsuha waltzes towards the area that the guy had just pointed to earlier and grabbed the whole pile of memory cards sitting on the shelf. Mitsuha grabs my arm and gives me a tug on my arm breaking my reverie as we both bolt outside.

As we exit the door, I see Okudera slumped on the floor of the stairs lying down, with Tsukasa standing over her, his lip bleeding and face looking swollen.

"Grab Miki!" Tsukasa yells at me. I hear a commotion from further up the stairs and incoherent shouting.

I don't ask questions and immediately move and grab her feet. It looks like she has already taken a beating from being dragged along the floor. I lift Okudera's legs, and Tsuksasa grabs Okudera's body, and we bolt outside.

As we exit the building into the sunlight we all burst out with a loud breath, relieved to be outside now. We straighten Okudera onto Tsukasa's shoulders and continue running towards the train station, afraid to look back to see if we are chased.

"I doubt they'll follow us too much," Mitsuha breathes out as we run, "But I don't want to take my chances!"

As we turn past a number of streets, Tsukasa stops and pauses.

"I don't think we're being followed anymore." He informs us.

"Let's go back to my place first," Tsukasa says as we catch our breaths and confirm that no-one has followed us.

"I want to take care of Miki and we can sort through those video files and make copies too," he props Okudera on the floor.

"Don't tell her when she wakes, but she's not as light as she used to be," Tsukasa says puffing.

We laugh; it's amazing how sensible and non-sensible Tsukasa can be sometimes.

We head to the train station and ride the train for about half an hour towards the Saitama area.

I had never been to Okudera and Tsukasa's place before so I was interested to see where they lived. As we rode the train, Okudera woke up, groggily.

"Good, you got me out of there," she mumbled as she yawned and looked at Tsukasa, "wake me up when we're home," she said before falling asleep again on Tsukasa's shoulder.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Taki

The walk to their place was only a few minutes from the station. I had never realised how well-off they seemed to be. They had a two-story house with tanned coloured rendered walls. Flower beds adorned the front and sides of the house filled with cosmos and cyclamens. It was rare seeing a neighbourhood with houses in Tokyo, even if this was in the 'Greater Tokyo' region.

Tsukasa fished out his keys and opened the door, quickly slipping off his shoes and offering us house slippers to put on too.

"I'd show you guys around better next time, but we should get this done first," he apologised to us.

"Go upstairs and sleep Miki, I can take care of this now," Tsukasa tells Okudera.

We take our shoes off and put on the slippers he has given us as we let Tsukasa and Okudera talk with each other. Mitsuha is still holding onto the small box filled with the memory cards in them.

"I'm ok now, I'll go make some tea," we hear Okudera talk with Tsuskasa,

"It's ok dear, you should just rest up," Tsukasa speaks softly, "I feel terrible for what I've done to you."

"It's ok, I'm fine. I want some tea anyway after all that…" Okudera replies, "I'll make some tea for us, and later, I'll give you an earful" she teases Tsukasa. Okudera excuses herself from us and walks presumably towards the kitchen.

Tsukasa takes us down the corridor, past a staircase and into a room that appears to be his study room.

"This is my study. I'll grab a few stuff so we can look at these memory cards," he tells us, "I have a spare card-reader somewhere around and I also want to grab a spare USB to make a backup in case something happens," he says as he leaves the room.

Tsukasa disappears out of the room leaving only Mitsuha and me behind.

"Good work grabbing the box," I tell Mitsuha, not quite sure what else to say, "I can't believe we did what we just did today,"

"Haha, it was all I could think of doing. Hopefully they have our video file on it… " Mitsuha says.

"Actually… would they have even sent the memory card for processing since nothing actually happened?" I ask, reflecting on the actions we just took.

Mitsuha stopped and looked at me.

"Don't ask that," her face fell as she stares at me, "let's just go through the videos first. No negative thoughts yet" she says as she bites her bottom lip, ignoring the fact that she brought up the doubt in the first place.

"We should try talk to Sayaka and Tessie when we find the videos," I tell Mitsuha, "although, I'm not sure if I would be welcomed to see them if their relationship is a bit strained…"

"Yeah, I think it might be better if I talk to Sayaka myself," Mitsuha tells me.

As Mitsuha and I discussed what to do with Tessie and Sayaka, Tsukasa came back into the room with a laptop bag slung over his shoulder. A USB sporting his company logo on it was clutched in his hand together with an old looking card reader device that could take several types of memory cards.

"I've got a laptop here, I think both of them have SD card readers which we can use. Let's set it up too, I'll use my computer. We'll divide up the cards and check through each of the USBs to find the right one." he says.

Mitsuha opens the laptop bag and gets the equipment out. I look for the powerpoint to help extend the cable across. We turn the laptop on, hearing the old windows XP sound and seeing the multi-coloured flag pop-up.

"How old is this laptop?" Mitsuha asks Tsukasa,

"Haha, well my more modern ones don't have SD card readers inside them,' Tsukasa explained.

Once we set the laptops up, Tsukasa and I took an SD card and inserted it into the card slot. As we each start up a video of each one, we recognise the area which is being filmed. Then as we watch for a little longer, our mouths drops.

I look at Mitsuha who also has her mouth open before she slams the laptop lid closed.

"You aren't watching these videos!" she cries out mortified.

Even if they aren't the videos of us, the data here is definitely incriminating. The video files are split into the security camera tape of entering the reception, and then of… shall we say, much more sordid material.

It was at that moment that Okudera entered the room holding a tray full of small tea cups and a pot.

"Sorry to bother," Okudera says as she steps forward, looking at our shocked faces.

"What's with those faces…." Okudera begins to ask as Tsukasa's computer speakers gives off a loud squeal and moan... _yamete…._

And so together, Tsukasa, Okudera, Mitsuha and I stay frozen in position not quite believing what was on those memory cards. It wasn't until we registered the sounds of rattling porcelain that we snapped back to life, helping Okudera set the tray down and pour tea for us.

"Ok, I'm pretty sure this material is illegal, but we should check a few more of these clips and make sure that the material is 'illegal' than just 'distasteful', Tsukasa tells us.

"You just want to watch perverted stuff!" Okudera scolds Tsukasa, "when we first got married, and Fuji said his wedding vows, he was all about how I was the only person he wanted and would look at but no…" Okudera put the back of her hand or her forehead as if wiping off sweat.

"Alright, woman, you can watch first, I'm going to get another hard drive to help record all of it better so I can watch it when you're gone," Tsukasa teased Okudera right back.

Mitsuha and I look at each other, amazed by how easy going the two of them seem despite the matter which we were doing this being so serious.

"Look, we followed you to some random country town when you were in high school, Fuji and I aren't surprised by weird stuff happening around you," Okudera told me flatly, sensing my discomfort.

Tsukasa disappeared out of the room to fetch another hard drive as we look at more of the videos. As we watch though, we see the exact same room and spiked tea trick being used. There are a number of different type of people for those videos; not all are pretty girls being tricked. We see older ladies, younger men all go inside. Though not all of them are drugged, even some of the prettier younger girls. We guess that they still want enough of a pretence of a legitimate business. Though with what we have seen, even if we don't find the video of us, this should be sufficient evidence to have the owners locked up in gaol. Still though, it would be good if we had the video of us so that we can jog Teshigawara's memory.

"I should be able to make a copy all of the videos here," Tsukasa says as he comes back into the room with an external hard drive.

Okudera gives him a look,

"Look you can back these up if you want, it's not for me!" he yelps, "just in case the evidence gets destroyed; you can never be too careful and data storage is free."

As Tsukasa begins copying the memory cards that we have already look at, Mitsuha and I continue browsing the remaining memory cards. I feel awkward looking at these materials with Mitsuha; I feel slightly nervous being around Mitsuha as is, not wanting to make a bad impression on her, and here I am looking at really perverted stuff! I think Mitsuha is uncomfortable too but is focusing on finding our video,

"Look, I know you guys watch this sort of stuff," Mitsuha tells Fuji and me, "but you guys better not be watching th.. th… _this_ sort of stuff," she stammers.

"It'll take a few hours for me to copy all of these files; the card reader isn't the fastest thing," Tsukasa tells us. "I'll continue searching through it as well to see what else we find and I might just take it to the police first."

"It's getting pretty late too," Okudera-sempai speaks up. Perhaps you two should get some rest now too.

I look at Mitsuha and she looks pretty exhausted.

"Alright," I say, "that might be a sensible suggestion. Want to go Mitsuha?"

Mitsuha looks at me hesitantly,

"Actually I might go see Sa-chan now… I am a bit worried about her", Mitsuha tells me.

"Why do we have to fill these forms out?" we hear Sayaka's voice. Mitusha and I quickly turn back to the laptop screen in surprise.

We've found the video of us.

We see the video image of us at the reception filling out the forms reluctantly. We see the receptionist serving the tea to us.

"Give me a USB," Mitsuha quickly demands of Tsukasa.

Tsukasa quickly complies with Mitsuha's request.

Mitsuha takes the USB and fumbles around with the computer for a few seconds. She looks up at me with a crossed brow.

"Uhh… copy this video for me" She tells me sticking her lips up in a somewhat proud fashion.

I give a chuckle and copy the video over to the USB.

"I'm going to see Tessie and Sayaka quickly. I want to show them proof of what happened".

Seeing her friends act so cold to each other must have been hard on Mitsuha. It's probably a good idea too.

"Ok," Both Tsukasa and I say at the same time.

"I'll go with Mitsuha too… I mightn't go to Tessie's place but I'll accompany you for a bit at least," I tell Mitsuha. I didn't really want to be separated too much just in case anything happened to Mitsuha or me…

Mitsuha nodded at me, and we both pack up our things. It was pretty important that we try jog Tessie's memories as soon as possible.

"I'll see how I go with the copying of stuff, but I might try visit the police station this evening too… It's probably better if I just go alone with Miki in case the same police officers see you and refuse to talk to us." Tsukasa informs us.

"Sounds sensible," Mitsuha and I agree.

As we finalise our plans, Okudera walked us to the door and reminded us how to get back to the station.

"It was good seeing you again Taki, and it was lovely meeting you Miyamizu-chan, let's catch up properly when this is all over."

As we leave their house, Mitsuha and I walk in somewhat muted silence as if both of us determined to get things done.

Mitsuha tapped away on her phone. She contacted Sayaka to make sure they were home and to see the best way to get to Tessie and Sayaka's place from where we were…

"Everything's going to be ok," I try to reassure Mitsuha.

"Yeah..." Mitsuha's voice replies back meekly as if unconvinced.

Somehow despite the breakthrough in finding the video, our mood is dampened by remembering Tessie and Sayaka's relationship.

We catch the train to the station closest to Tessie and Sayaka's. It's not too far away.

As we ride the train in silence, Mitsuha's phone begins to buzz. Everyone on the carriage looks at us with annoyed faces. She looks at the name with a puzzled face, as she turns to me.

"It's Yotsuha… I haven't spoken to her in ages…"

I nod to her; we'll just pretend we're one of those truant school kids without polite manners. Tokyo's a bit different these days too. Unless you're on the morning commute, people's phone usage has become more prominent.

Mitsuha answers the phone quietly,

"Hello? Yotsuha?"

As she talks on the phone to her sister I hear her voice change from a tone of annoyance anf confusion to one of concern.

"I see, I'll buy a train ticket now," I hear Mitsuha say.

"Is everything ok?" I ask her as she finishes the call and we approach the station we want to get off at.

"Did you want to come with me to Gifu?" Mitsuha asks me.

We step outside of the doors.

"I don't want to go back alone," She says, tears welling in her eyes.

"Umm… sure?' I say, "what happened?" I ask.

"My dad has lost his memories. I need to go back tomorrow".


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

The boy and girl look up. This was the right place. They had been wandering around for a while now trying to find the right area to be in. Even though this was a newly constructed part of town, planned for the inhabitants of Itomori, the numbering of the area still had a lot to be desired.

The neighbourhood was neatly arranged though. Rows of small free-standing houses next to each other as if the neighbourhood was constructed using a monopoly set.

The boy and girl walked up and down the main road looking at the lampposts and the ground for any markers pointing to the right chome number. Eventually finding the right number, they walked down the straight row to find the right building number.

The girl walked with trepidation to the house.

As they approached the right house, the girl heard familiar voices.

"It's your own fault you know," the sound of an old lady spoke, "if you only kept taking care of the shrine you wouldn't be like this! It's Futaba's retribution!"

"Obaa-san, you've said that countless times already," a younger voice spoke. The voice belonged to a person who looked very much like the girl. Despite the gravity of the old lady's voice, the younger voice sounded more displeased and annoyed than concerned.

"And anyway, dad's not even here, he's at hospital remember? Even if he was here he wouldn't understand what you're saying too" the voice continued.

The boy and girl walked up closer to the house.

"Ah Yotsuha, if only you were the one," the grandmother spoke, "you're elder sister is like your dad, too caught up in their dreams. I should have said more to Futaba before she met your dad…"

"Obaa-san!" Yotsuha snapped, "even if he hasn't been a perfect father, he is still our dad."

"Ah Yotsuha," the grandmother spoke on, "I can hear the shrine groaning still. Why are we here anyway, why can't we go home?"

The girl looked at the old lady, the grandmother; it looked like _her_ grandmother. She looked so much older now.

"It was destroyed by the comet remember?' Yotsuha told her grandmother patiently, "Tiamet?"

"It's not destroyed! The Shrine is still there! I don't like it here! You just kept to your politics instead of taking care of the town! Toshiki. Why did you come to Itomori in the first place!" Yotsuha's grandmother ranted changing the target of her rage at the younger girl's dad.

The boy and girl watched Yotsuha sigh,

"Dealing with grandma was hard enough dad, why did your brain have to disappear at times too? Why can't Onee-chan be here. Why did she have to leave to Tokyo? It's unfair leaving this burden to me" Yotsuha spoke airily into the sky.

The boy and girl looked at each other. The girl looked sad as she walked up to Yotsuha, the girl opened her arms and tried to give Yotsuha a hug. Yotsuha sighed, not showing signs of feeling the presence of the boy or girl.

"I wish I was in Tokyo too sometimes," Yotsuha mumbled.

"You want to follow your sister to Tokyo!" Yotsuha's grandmother barked.

"Sometimes I do!" Yotsuha barked back before she stormed away.

The girl looked at Yotsuha and started to follow. Feelings swirled inside for the girl; emotions of concern, feeling ashamed, anger, care, fear… But the boy held her back. Now wasn't the time.

The girl looked at the boy and hung her head. They had another destination to get to; Tokyo. Whilst they thought they had gotten close, they now had to go further. It wasn't Rome that all roads lead to; it was Tokyo.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Mitsuha

I'm not sure why I invited Taki along to visit my family, it just blurted out of my mouth. I think he's also surprised as to why he's following me to meet my family, though somehow it feels like he already knows them. I'm really grateful that he is coming though.

"So I'm not actually from Gifu," I tell Taki.

"I know," Taki replies.

"I didn't like Itomori much as a kid, but Gifu was even worse," I lamented to him.

"How so?" Taki asks me.

"You'll see," I say.

I paused before speaking again, "the relationship between my family isn't that great right now though. Grandmother was always really reluctant to move away from Itomori and dad always felt like he was too confined by what he could achieve at Itomori. So dad saw the comet as a wake-up call to become more active and ambitious in life. Grandma saw it as a warning for us in trying to develop Itomori too much and that we needed to go back and return to the humble ways of the past."

"Isn't that just a generational thing though? Grandparents are always more conservative thinking back on the past," Taki comments to me.

"I guess, but each of them held a grudge against each other… It also goes back to when my mother died…" I say, my voice slowly fading.

"I'm sorry to hear about that. I guess every family is unique though," Taki tells me trying to cheer me up, "my parents got divorced a few years ago. Both of my parents got new partners pretty quickly too and somehow, I became an unwanted child who was about to be an adult and able to move out… I still reckon that both of them already had separate partners when they were married though. I think it's a Tokyo disease, everyone's so fast paced and stuck at their jobs wanting to get more that they fail to appreciate the relationships that they already have."

"That's pretty tough. My parents did love each other when my mum was still alive. Though she fell sick, and my dad had misgivings about helping out at the family shrine. Shortly after the funeral, he moved out of the home and became even more focused on the town's politics. I guess I have a bit of his genes in me though, since all I wanted to do as a kid was move out of Itomori, and get away from the shrine. I even shouted out to the shrine gods to turn me into a boy so I didn't have to work there anymore!" I laugh as I think about that last statement.

"I'd forgotten about that, you know," I tell Taki, "for some reason it feels like there's a whole chunk of my past missing that's just waiting to be unlocked again."

"I feel the same way!" Taki responded emphatically, "it's terrible, it's like one of those terrible romance anime where the main character has forgotten his childhood friend…"

"Oh yeah?" I say, "I have to confess, I don't watch much anime."

We continue chatting until we arrive at Gifu about our families, our lives in Tokyo and a little on what to do about the videos we had just acquired. I think both of us didn't want to talk about it too much, going to Gifu was sort of a mini escape from reality. We did end up showing the videos to Sayaka and Tessie yesterday though. The videos didn't help with Tessie's memory, but Sayaka felt a bit more bold about what it showed and what happened. She decided to go to the police station to meet with Fuji-san and Okudera-san too though. Although not too much happened the police station. A different officer was stationed there this time, and all that happened was that he took Fuji's details and said they would contact the relevant people again. With that anti-climactic sequence of events, Taki and I didn't have any obstructions in taking the morning shinkansen to Gifu.

We arrived at the Gifu-Hashima station and I led Taki to catch the local train. The loca train line lead to a bus stop which serviced where my village was relocated. Because the area of town was newly made, it was never connected to public transport routes too easily. That being said, it sounds like a complicated set of transport, but it was far worse when I lived in Itomori.

"I guess one benefit of Dad being so into politics was that it was pretty easy for Dad to convince them to give the people of Itomori a new neighbourhood. There was already a planned housing estate being developed, so through Dad's goodwill with the government, the Gifu government acquired the land and they constructed new houses for all of us within half a year."

"Woah, that's pretty impressive," Taki told me, "I always thought that when it came to the public sector, nothing gets done from all the red tape."

"Dad's pretty good, I guess," I reply, "I do wonder what happened to him though and whether it's connected to what happened with Tessie."

"Should we go to the hospital first?" Taki asks me, "or is it better to go to your home first?"

"Good question," I say, before pulling out my phone to call Yotsuha.

"Hey Yotsuha," I snap at her on the phone, "where are you now?"

Somehow I feel like I purposely talk brash with Yotsuha. When we were kids, I used to be really close to her, but slowly we became more distant. As I became more focused on going to Tokyo than helping with the new life in Gifu, our relationship deteriorated slightly.

"We're at the hospital. You can come here first," Yotsu replied, "see you soon," before abruptly hanging up the phone. I guess I was curt to her first so I can't complain if she shows attitude too.

"I guess we're going to the hospital first," I tell Taki.

When we get to the hospital, the receptionist tells us where dad is kept. I'm not sure if I'm being overly sensitive but I have the feeling like I'm being judged by the receptionist; I'm the wayward daughter who has only come back now. I follow the receptionists' direction anyhow and apprehensively walk towards the room where dad is.

"I don't like hospitals," I tell Taki, "bad memories."

Taki doesn't say anything but takes my hand and we walk in silence to where my dad's bed is. I'm surprised by how bold he is taking my hand, but it's reassuring and I hold it tight.

I stand outside the door, a bit reluctant to go in, when Taki releases my hand and lightly knocks on the door and opens slightly. He stands to the side and motions for me to enter first.

I see dad there on the bed, propped up sipping on a juice. Grandma is there too sitting on a chair looking out of the window and Yotsuha is sitting by dad's bed, reading a book.

Yotsuha puts the book down and looks and Taki and me,

"Who's this?" Yotsuha asks me bluntly, "found a Tokyo boy eh? Not going to be Christmas cake now?"

"Don't be rude," I snap at Yotsuha,

"I'm Tachibana, I'm friends with your sister, it's nice to meet Yotsuha. You're sister has said nice things about you," Taki greets Yotsuha.

"Nice to meet you too," Yotsuha replies, "be careful, my sister is a weird one. She used to go through stages where she acted like a boy."

"Shut up Yotsuha!" I quip at her.

And that's how my family is, I want to tell Taki. We're somehow functional, but communication and niceties aren't our strong point.

"Dad," I say, walking closer to him. "It's me,"

"Futaba?" Dad says, taking his attention away from his juice popper.

"It's me, Mitsuha, are you ok?"

"Ah, Mitsuha, you can't be, you're too big. You must be Futaba's cousin. I'm fine, I just don't know why we can't go back home already, can you tell your cousin to hurry up and let me out of here."

"And that's how he is," Yotsuha tells me, "he'll go silent again in a bit."

And like that, dad's face seemed to go blank again as if in a comatose state.

"I'll wait outside for you," Taki tells me, I guess feeling a little uncomfortable with the situation.

"WAIT!" Dad suddenly lurches up shouting at Taki. Taki and I freeze and look at dad.

"Don't do it," Dad suddenly blurts out, hands outstretched, beckoning Taki to move closer to him.

Taki walks closer to Dad's bed, "Mr Miyamizu?" Taki tentatively speaks.

"Don't abandon the Miyamizu's. Always honour them," Dad says in a trance like voice as if he was speaking to an oracle, "don't be like me…" he says again as he quietens down, flopping back into his bed.

"I think he's having a delusion again," Yotsuha piped up not looking up from her book,

"Uh should we call the nurses?" Taki asks,

"If he's not hurting himself, it's ok, we don't need to call the nurses."

"It's ok, you can wait outside," I tell Taki, intervening, "we'll have to take grandma home soon too."

Taki steps outside to wait for me. Dad quietens down, and Yotsuha looks at me ruefully.

"You came back Mitsuha" my grandma smiles at me.

"I'm here obaa-san," I tell her as I hold her hands.

"What's your relationship with that boy? Are you going out with him?" grandma asks me.

I don't know how to respond,

"Uhh," I stammer, "it's not like that…"

"Just friends?" Yotsuha pipes up with her arms folded.

"Well, I haven't known Taki for that long…" I say. Are we even friends? I wonder to myself.

"But he follows you all the way to Gifu to meet your family?" Yotsuha ask me, "Is he why you ran off to Tokyo one day?"

"I did that?" I ask, puzzled.

"Sure, sure, we'll pretend it didn't happen," Yotsuha teases me as if not believing me.

After what seems like a lifetime of silence, grandma speaks up

"She doesn't remember Yotsuha. That's why I want to go back to Itomori," grandma sighed, "everything's wrong."

"It's just different, grandma," Yotsuha replied, "we have to get used to life in the city now,"

"No, reality is wrong... It's breaking…" Grandma said, speaking cryptically.

"She's been going like this for a while now," Yotsuha tells me, "maybe she'll turn like dad…"

"Thanks for your hard work Yotsuha…" I say softly. I feel bad, perhaps I have abandoned my family. And all for what? A part-time job in Tokyo doing more or less what I did in Itomori as a kid, and a boy I am drawn to but have no idea why?

What is my relationship with Taki? Why did I drag him along here? Why did he follow? It just feels like I've known him for a really long time… and someone to rely on during times of difficulty. I shake my head trying to clear my thoughts of Taki. There's too much to think about. Too much to worry about. Dad's in hospital, I'm reunited with Yotsuha, and grandma's mental health is deteriorating. I can worry about Taki later… I have to try and worry about Taki later…


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19 - Taki

We ate a quick meal at the hospital for an early lunch and got a taxi back to Mitsuha's house after that. Busses to that region from the hospital aren't too common and we didn't want Mitsuha's grandmother to walk too much.

At Mitsuha's place I got a quick introduction to the house. It was a relatively common two story design not dissimilar to what Tsukasa had, although signs of a hasty construction such as the copius plasterboard could be seen, That being said, the house seemed larger than what I was expecting.

"Did you know the Tatami sizes are different to Tokyo sizes" Mitsuha told me, "the further south you go the larger the tatami sizes are."

I guess more generous land sizes can be used when it isn't a super busy city. Mitsuha showed me upstairs to the 'guest room' to sleep in.

"If you get lost later, it's the first room in front of you as you enter just in front of the stairs." she reminds me.

"Sorry about the boxes here, no-one really stays at the guest room so there's lots of storage kept there," she apologises to me as we step inside. I look around the room, "where's your room?" I ask Mitsuha.

"I'm staying in grandma's room." she replies, "anyways, go settle in, I need to talk to grandma and help her for a bit"

I look around the room, noticing the girly decor and white cardboard boxes neatly stacked on the side of the room.

As I unpack my toiletries and open my bag to let my clothes air a bit, Yotsuha poke her head into the room.

"You can guess who's room that was can't you?" Yotsuha grins at me, "I think she doesn't want the memories of the room. For some reason when we moved in Mitsuha didn't like being here, she kept being really agitated as if she had lost something. I guess it got the most of her and she moved to Tokyo when she could."

"I didn't realise she was a very girly girl though," I tell Yotsuha pointing at the decorations around the room.

"She's not... though at times she pretends to be one, always dreaming that she's some kind of Edokko, born and bred with a fashionable Tokyo lifestyle… but as a weird boy/girl hybrid."

"It's not really that glamorous. People always say that us Japanese people are the most polite and friendly on the planet. I can assure you that that's not the case in Tokyo. Tokyo is just a big noisy city… with maybe the people less smelly and smaller sized than the white people in New York or London"

"Anyways, if you have a moment can you help me with the garden?" Yotsuha asks me, breaking me from my rant.

"Sure," I reply, not wanting to make a bad impression, "I don't really have any gardening experience since I've grown up in Tokyo though… the most greenery in my apartment was a bamboo plant I received that I kept in my room."

"Dad used to do it before, taking care of the garden. He wouldn't be interested when we were in Itomori, but after we moved… I guess it's more for grandma's sake though. He wanted to remind her of farm-life back in Itomori. I think he felt a little guilty somehow. Anyways we just need to remove weeds and plant new seeds?"

I guess I didn't have a choice. Yotsuha looked like Mitsuha, but just a few differences. Shorter, probably more 'roundish', different hair style and with a bit more of a cynical attitude to things.

As we started doing the work in the garden, I realised something. Gardening was painful. I thought that the invention of gardening tools made things easier! Rather it seemed to just create more jobs to do; rather than just pulling a weed with my hand, I had to use a tool to dig it in and lever it out. Rather than throwing seeds out, I had to dig with a pick-axe like tool into the ground first.

"You gotta steady your feet first, and put your whole body into it; else you're just using your arm strength and will get too tired," Yotsuha instructed me.

"Back in Tokyo, the extent of my botanical knowledge was the classroom plant in primary school that died after a semester," I complained to Yotsuha.

"So that's good, I'm teaching you life skills then." Yotsuha replied.

The job was mostly pulling weeds out, and then tilling the soil with a hoe so that the rice could be properly planted and irrigated.

"It's pretty tough work," I tell Yotsuha,

"You get used to it, but it's easier when there's more people helping," Yotsuha replied, "Mitsuha was terrible at this sort of stuff though. Despite acting like a tomboy, she refused to get her hands dirty. But man, you should have seen her in high school where she'd go through days walking, talking and eating like a boy! Anyways, as a concerned mature younger sister, I tried asking sis, but she didn't give me a proper response," Yotsuha cleared her throat, "what's your relationship with my sister?"

"Uhh…." I stammer, "actually, I'm not sure what my relation is with your sister?" I confess.

"It just feels like I've known her for a long while now and want to be there to support her…"

"Hmm...?" Yotsuha tries to probe me further before Mitsuha comes out, dressed in old trousers and long-sleeves.

"Trying to show off your gumption to Tachibana-san are you? You rarely helped out before" Yotsuha teased Mitsuha,

"Shut it squirt," Mitsuha replied slapping a hat on Yotsuha's face, "even though it's afternoon you should still wear one."

"Isn't it hot in those clothes?" I ask Mitsuha as she offers me a hat too.

Mitsuha looks and me in my shorts and singlet, "you'll see", she says giving off a chuckle.

The three of us work on the garden for another hour or so before Yotsuha says that she's going inside to prepare food and for us to have a shower and freshen up.

"Sorry for making you do this," Mitsuha says

"It's ok, it somehow feels nice to be working in the garden."

"I never liked doing this sort of work as a kid; not because I didn't like doing it, but more as a way of rebelling against family I guess. Sure the sweat and heat and dirt is gross, but it kinda makes you feel good too… Anyways, I want to throw some seeds in the ground now, it's a little early but it should be ok and it'll be harder for Yotsuha and grandma to do it later. "

As we work for another hour or so, I can see sweat beads form on Mitsuha's furrowed face. I take a gulp as I notice her clothes being slightly moistened too along her back….I turn my face away from staring at her. Despite her animosity towards Yotsuha, she's still a caring older sister.

We finally finish as the light fades into twilight. As I get inside the house my skin feels like it's burning. I look at it, and it's filled with bumps and hives.

"Arghhh! I think i'm allergic to something!" I shout out.

Mitsuha rushes over to me, looks at my arms and legs an laughs at me,

"Hahaha, see that's why I wore long sleeves and pants. They're mosquito bites. The Gifu bugs obviously loves your sweet Tokyo blood" Mitsuha giggles with glee.

"It's itching like crazy! I didn't feel it that much when i was outside," I complain.

"Yeah it's funny like that, like when you cut yourself and only feel it when you see the blood. But yeah, when you haven't been outside much, or not used to the environment, I feel like your skin is more tender so the bugs love biting you. I get bitten more often when I come visit too; hence why Yotsha was fine and I had to cover every inch of skin. Once you toughen up a bit though, then the bugs stop biting." Mitsuha explains to me.

"I'm almost missing Tokyo," I complain, "there are less mosquitos there!"

"Though the cockroaches there are way more gross," Mitsuha counters, "anyways have a hot bath first, the hot water helps a lot and I'll find where we keep the medicine is to help treat your bites. You'll just smell like a walking can of bug spray."

I go back to my 'room' to grab my towel and spare clothes. I shower then get into the bathtub. It feels amazing. I'm not sure whether it is because Gifu water is better or if it was because of my itchy skin, but the bath here was really nice.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Taki

I get out of the bathroom, my skin no longer as angry looking, but rather pink and soft. As I dry my body and feel the cool wind settle on my skin, I slowly start feeling the irritation of the bug bites again.

"Rub this on," Mitsuha tells me as she gives me some ointment to rub on the bites.

"It smells bad, but it's pretty good. You'll just smell like an old man for a while, but at least you won't look like you have the measles." Mitsuha teases me.

"I do feel like I have some sort of infectious disease now and I'm going to wake up turning into a zombie," I say to Mitsuha as I take the cream from her. She hands me a cotton bud which I squish some cream on to apply to my red angry spots. The cream smells really citrusy, but it feels really soothing and cooling as I apply it to my skin.

"Anyways, keep applying it, I'm going to take my bath now too," Mitsuha says as she goes to have a bath. I grimace a bit, she'll be using the water that I just used...I hope I showered well before entering the tub and didn't leave anything gross inside the bath water...

As Mitsuha is showering, my phone buzzes, it's Tsukasa.

 _Hey, the police wants to see us tomorrow, meet 10am at the station?_ He asks me.

I use my phone to check the train timetable. I'll also need to talk to Mitsuha, but I guess I can go back first.

 _Make it afternoon around 3?_ I reply Tsukasa. Considering the time taken to get to the shinkansen station at Gifu from here and the travel time, it may be better to make it later.

As I chat with Tsukasa in the living room, Mitsuha comes out, head wrapped with a towel wearing pyjamas.

"Baths are the best!" Mitsuha sings, "I try to not bath too often in Tokyo cause water's expensive and a huge waste. What's with the long face?" she asks as she sees me.

"I might head back to Tokyo tomorrow, Tsukasa messaged me" I tell her.

As I speak, Yotsuha comes out from the kitchen, "dinner's ready guys," she tells us before looking at Mitsuha and scolding her "you shouldn't wear your pyjamas you'll get it dirty".

"I can't be bothered changing again later," Mitsuha complained, "and it only smells when you cook, not when you eat Yotcchan's beautiful food right?" Mitsuha teases as she rubs Yotsuha's head.

Mitsuha turns to me as she moved to the kitchen, "I got a call from Sayaka too. She seems to be doing better but she's heading to the police station tomorrow cause they called her. So I was going, especially if she's feeling better now I want to support her."

Yotsuha looked at Mitsuha, "Are you leaving tomorrow sis?"

"Yeah, probably, I don't know if there's much we can do for dad at the moment anyway…" Mitsuha sighed.

"I'll chat to you later about that, anyways let's eat first before food gets cold and grandma gets cranky that we haven't started eating yet."

Dinner is rice with a few dishes; broiled mackerel, stewed beef and potatoes, salad. It's pretty good.

I help Mitsuha wash up after dinner.

"It's ok, you don't need to. We're still pretty traditional," Yotsuha and Mitsuha tells me, "I don't think dad has ever washed the dishes since we moved here."

"It's ok, I have to clean up when I live by myself anyway, so it's fine if I help out." I tell them.

Eventually I get kicked out of the kitchen and end up sitting on the couch watching TV with Mitsuha's grandmother.

"Take good care of her ok?" Mitsuha's grandmother tells me as she passes me a cold beer.

"Nothing beats a cold beer on a hot day," she tells me, "especially when you have a lot on your mind."

We watched a variety show on TV. The B-grade comedian participants are having to dodge fake meteorites. It seems like it's become a part of life; meteorites hitting Japan now. The rest of the variety show was pretty trashy, silly people doing silly things, but somehow it makes addictive watching. I wonder if people in Western countries watch the same sort of stuff. It'd be funny to see caucasians acting like what I see on the variety shows. When Mitsuha and Yotsuha finished washing up, they also came over and we continued watching TV.

We called it an early night since I wanted to make I was ready to head back to Tokyo tomorrow. I also wanted Mitsuha time to spend time with her family for the short time she spent with them.

I crawl into the futon on the floor; I never really used a futon. I know it's common, but my family has always used beds. It's not too uncomfortable I think to myself, arguably because it's on the floor I have the whole floor as my bed size. As I slowly drift off to sleep, I hear Mitsuha and her family talking.

"You miss Itomori, don't you grandma?" I hear Mitsuha say,

"I can't believe you have all these photos still…."

"Of course she still thinks of you dummy,"

"Onee-chan, I'm glad you came back,"

"I know we don't get along as well as we used to, but of course I'll still always be your older sister."

I'm glad the sisters still care for each other, I think to myself as I hear Yotsuha's voice become more serious.

"I have something I need to ask you though, you're probably not going to like it though,"

"I know," Mitsuha's voice speaks softly,"I'll move back to Gifu,"

"'I'm sorry sis. Though what about Taki? He's nice"

I can't hear what Mitsuha's reply is though,

"I'll stay for a few days and sort things up there before I come back properly…"

My mind start turning. Hearing this discussion and knowing that Mitsuha has decided to go back home makes my heart pour out for her. She's gone through so much in Tokyo, especially in the past few days, but all of that has to be put on hold to go back as her family life is also crumbling. I don't know what I can do to support her, but I also don't want to pry. It seems personal too so I don't want to ask questions.

I lay awake in bed thinking about Mitsuha's situation. Life is never easy is it?


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Mitsuha

The next morning, Taki and I go to the train station and buy a ticket back to Tokyo. It was a fast trip… if you can call it a trip. It was good that Taki came though, even though a lot of private family stuff occured, it felt good having his support there.

"Every family has their own issues that they have to deal with." Taki commented, "Like my parents are divorced and the social stigma from that was pretty crappy... Though I feel bad, I don't think I can properly imagine what it would be like to lose one of them, or see one of my parents lose their memories."

"I'm not sure which is worse actually; seeing your parents relationship fight and it break down, or to see one parent grieve over the loss of the other." I try and rationalise.

I'm not sure why I asked Taki along, and I have no idea why he decided to follow, but I guess he wanted to offer me support. Which is really sweet of him.

 _What are you going to to about Taki?_ Yotsuha's question still rings in my ears. What does Taki think of me?

I lose myself in thought as we ride the train in relative silence. Taki seems to be quite pensive sitting on the train too. I don't know why, but even though it's been a short time, I feel nervous thinking about the future and how Taki fits into that plan. I'm not exactly the youngest anymore; by traditional Japanese standards I'm getting along in years to not have a boyfriend. I haven't even had a boyfriend before...although sometimes it feels like I have had one. I'm not sure whether it was something stopping me from opening my heart to anyone else, or if I'm too independent to even have someone else there but officially, I've never had a boyfriend.

What do I even want? What can I even offer? Taki is still young and perfectly capable by himself. He probably has his own career worries instead. Do I even have a spot in his heart? What happened to my dreams of being in the fashion industry? will I have to compromise work and relationship? It'd have been easier if we had met in high school and built a relationship up then! These thoughts make me feel dour and morose.

As I lose myself if my self-reflection my stomach growls. I look up from my stupor embarrassed to see Taki also looking at me with a smirk on his face.

"It wasn't me!" I stare defiantly at him.

Taki chuckles as he stands up to reach the overhead storage above us. He reaches over to a plastic bag and picks up the _ekiben_ we bought at the station before boarding.

"It's more or less lunch time" he meekly says to me as he pass me my lunch bento.

"Thanks," I say. I didn't realise how hungry I was.

"Even though we haven't done much and even though Yotsuha made us breakfast this morning, I'm pretty hungry actually," Taki tells me.

"It's strange, I guess planning and catching a train is more energy intensive than our normal sedentary lifestyle" I reply.

"Haha yeah," Taki responds, scratching his arms, "man, I can't believe how bad the mosquitoes are in Gifu,"

"You get used to it when you live out in the country," I say, "by the way, what's the plan for when we arrive," I ask.

"Well, we'll arrive in 45 minutes or so, shall we meet at the police station at around 3?; that way we have about an hour and a half to go home and freshen up," Taki suggest, "I need to go back to drop my luggage off and make sure my apartment is ok too".

"Sure," I reply, "I always feel gross after train rides so I could do with a freshen up. Give me a message when you're leaving your apartment too," I say.

I also had to organise getting my apartment packed-up and stuff shipped back to Gifu. I didn't really want to waste too long going back. There was a lot to do actually, cancelling my utility bills, internet, changing addresses. I groan to myself.

"You ok?" Taki asks me. I must have sighed audibly.

"Yeah, I'm ok," I reply. Not really wanting to say more. I don't really know what to tell Taki or even if I should say anything at all.

"Ok, but I'm here to talk if you need," Taki tells me.

That's sweet of him, but don't really reply.

The rest of the train trip ends up relatively quiet. I guess both of us end up lost in thought.

"I'll see you later," I tell Taki as we get off the shinkansen and take the relevant local subway to our apartments. My mind makes a mental checklist of the things I have to get done as I ride the subway back. I look out the window as the train passes by the stops that had become so familiar to me over the years. I look out, seeing the Yotsuha station go past; that's where this adventure all seemed to have started and it will hopefully be ending soon.

I get out and walk to my apartment. I open my door and step inside, taking a deep breath; this will be one of the last breaths in this room, I think. I look around, my bowl from the other day still sitting in the sink, crusted over with traces of miso at the bottom. It may be messy, but this place was mine for a good number of years. I pull out my phone and look at the time; I still have an hour or so till I have to get to the police station. I open my LINE app, somehow looking to see if there's any messages there that I didn't notice in a notification. Nothing. I scroll down my chats; nothing from Taki, nothing from Sayaka. I click Sayaka's name.

"How's it going?" I message her. It'd probably be good if I touch base with her first before going to the police station.

I turn on my laptop on as I wait for Sayaka's reply. I guess I should do some research on delivery trucks in Tokyo and whether anyone online has a checklist of things that has to be done when moving out.

As I contemplate what to do, I hear a knock at my door. Go away! I think to myself, "I don't have a television!" I shout out roughly. I keep getting people knocking about that. It seriously seems more expensive for the NHK to send people to collect TV bills than to just broadcast like everyone else in the world does.

"Uh, Miyamizu-san," a lady's voice calls out. I recognise that voice,"it's your landlord…"

I walk to the door gingerly and open it, knowing what this is about.

"I'm sorry!" I say, bowing my head instinctively as I open the door.

"I know you're normally very good, but if I could receive for this month's rent…You haven't been home much so I saw you come home so I thought I would see you..." the landlady told me.

She was a good landlady, especially considering my tardiness in paying the rent. It's not cause I don't have the money (well, I am sometimes strapped for cash), but more so me forgetting to pay.

"Ah yes! I'm sorry. I'll go to the bank now to pay" I say, before taking a breath, "actually… there's something I need to tell you. My dad's health isn't doing well, so I need to go back to Gifu…" I tell her.

As the landlady closes the door, I slump down to the grown at my small genkan. This was harder than I thought it would be. As I sit down, my phone buzzes from my dining table.

I grudgingly lean backwards to rock myself up to my feet. It's from Sayaka. My phone buzzes again, it's from Taki.

I bury my head in my hands.

I'm not going to think about this anymore! I'm going to go ahead an organise to meet with Sayaka instead first!


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22 - Taki

I get to the police station a few minutes early. Mitsuha is already there with Sayaka, Tsukasa and Okudera.

"Mr `Tachibana, thank you for coming." I hear a voice say. It is the first police officer that we had met originally when we went to see the police; inspector Mori.

Inspetor Mori bowed his head to me, and motioned for this two colleagues next to him to do so too, "we humbly apologise for what happened earlier," they all said together. The other two policemen were the detectives who interviewed us before when Tessie had lost his memories.

I look at Mitsuha, and she give me a shrug, this was quite a different attitude to what we had received before.

"It's ok," I reply, "as long as we can catch the people, i'll be happy".

The officers bring us inside the police station and to a meeting room to have a talk and briefing.

"We just need you to help make a formal testimony and identification of the perpetrators," they explain to us.

Tsukasa and Okudera sit on two metallic chairs in the room as I stand behind Tsukasa and Mitsuha and Sayaka behind Miki-senpai. I tried mouthing to Mitsuha earlier, 'what happened to Tessie', but a quick throat slit action in reply made me drop the question.

"It's easier if you guys are here with us when we make the arrest so that we can apprehend the suspects immediately. Also if they pretend to be someone else, since you've seen and met them, you can identify them easier than we can." the police continues their briefing to us. A female police officer comes inside placing pieces of paper in front of us.

"These are waiver forms," they explain to us, "we're not liable for anything happening to you guys if you get hurt."

What choice do we have if we want to catch those criminals? We sign the waivers and return the paper to them.

"We'll have two police vans for you guys to follow in," they continue telling us, showing us a map of the area we're going to, "we'll be splitting up though to take either exists and entrances."

Before we can ask more questions, we're glibly brought through the station to an exit out the back. Briefing done.

For some reason I never realised there was a back entrance, the police station always looks so small when you enter that you forget that it extends back to another street. As we exit, we step into a small parking lot that contains about 6 car spaces. However instead of seeing any police cars, we see two white vans parked with a space between each other. Police in thick blue clothing walk around the van holding clipboards and walkie-talkies. They seem to be moving around looking busy, putting things inside, taking things out...and looking important.

"We'll split the two boys and girls up," one of the police tells Inspector Mori as we approach. Mori nods, and I go with Tsukasa in one van and Sayaka and Mitsuha goes in the other one.

"This way we can cover both exits in case they try to run." another officer inside the van tells me. He looks younger than the others and altogether rather excited.

"How did the police locate where the perpetrators are anyway?" I ask Tsukasa as we start moving.

"Well, as you know, Sayaka, Miki and I went with the police station with the video evidence to confirm your story. The police went back to the psychic store place but the kidnappers disappeared already and left. They had left behind a lot of evidence though."

"They had fake names for contact details too on the rent," the police officer who was with us chimed in.

"What was fortunate though," Tsukasa continued, "was that the video editing store was still there."

"so we got to interrogate him real good," grinned the police officer, intruding in on the conversation again much to Tsukasa's chagrin.

"So in return for a bargain, he disclosed the location of where Takeshi and his associates are."

We drive for what seems to be a less savoury part of town. Neon lights advertising snack bars, cabaret clubs and soap lands fill the street. We pull into a small 100 yen parking lot. I chuckle to myself as I remember having a conversation with Mitsuha over these;

"I thought Tokyo was super expensive, but that parking rate is cheap!" Mitsuha had exclaimed before realising that although they always advertise 100 yen, the duration you get to park for though is much more limited. In Gifu 100 yen go you 1 hour. In this part of Tokyo, 100 yen cost 6 minutes. I guess the benefit of being a police car is that you don't need to worry about paying for parking.

We stop the van and the policemen dressed in black file out quietly. One officer motions us to get out too but to stay behind everyone. We would be following him from the behind just in case they try to escape, but far enough so that we remain safe from any danger. I start wondering whether I should have signed that waiver form or not.

We slowly walk forward until we reach the front of a shop; the shop sign is old and weathered. The sign has no words on it, just a faded image of a coffee cup with steam coming out.

"At first I thought it looked really hidden, but really who would have a coffee shop in a basement like this?" Tsukasa whispers at me, "It's obviously used for something other than coffee when it's in an area like this, and looking as grungy as this too."

The officers slowly approach the sides of the door. One of the members holds a finger to his ear listening. They seem to wait before entering. It appears they are listening to communications on a headphone; this should be much better coordinated that what happened with our ad-hoc phone before with Okudera-sempai!

Finally after what seemed to be a really long delay on policeman stands forward towards the door holding a metal pole of some sort. With a silent countdown, he swings the pole backwards, and crashes it into the door handle, breaking the door lock and swinging open the door. Tsukasa and I are held back by the police officer looking after us and we watch the police rush down into the blackness behind the door of the dubious looking coffee shop.

"Do you think they even tried to see if the door was unlocked first?" Tsukasa asks me,

"I suppose it wastes time trying and could give them a tip-off?" I postulate back.

"Shh", the police officer looking after us motions for us to be quiet.

The wait seems to take a long time. We can't hear any sounds going on inside.

"Hang on," Tsukasa nudges me whispering, "what's that person over there doing…"

A man with a black overcoat somehow has appeared near the building. I look up and the window above looks to be open.

"He's probably a bystander?" the policeman with us questions,

The man looks at us waiting near the entrance to the coffee shop. I look back at him, and I see his face.

"That's him!" Tsukasa yells, recognising him at the same time I do. The man pauses and then runs.

Whilst Tsukasa recognised and called out first, I'm the first to react as I bolt into a run too to give chase. I'm not sure if I should leave this to the police, but I'm not going to take my chances! Adrenaline fills my body as I run; I've tackled someone before so this should be no problem right?

I chase Takeshi onto a perpendicular alleyway; it's narrow and barely wide enough for us to run. Takeshi seems to know this area well though as he ducks under air conditioning units jutting out from the wall and jumping over discarded garbage bags. I follow right behind him, this alley must have been one of those delivery lanes from back in the days that only allowed people to walk through. I wish that people put their rubbish out later or the rubbish collectors came earlier, I think as I kick one bag containing burnable food scraps.

As I chase after Takeshi, I feel like I'm flying; left turn, right turn, over rubbish, under awnings. I feel like I am gaining ground as I am able to keep an eye on wherever he is. Takeshi drops his cloak, flinging it behind him as it is now unneeded to hide his disguise. No matter what, I repeat to myself, I'm going to get that bastard.

He turns left around another corner, this neighbourhood is like a maze I complain to myself. As I run to follow him around the corner, I hear a shout. As I turn the corner, I instantly see Mitsuha with a surprised expression on her face, Saya and two other police officers are next to her. This isn't the other side of the exit, why are they here?

Takeshi races towards them, also somewhat confused but intent on running past them. Perhaps he assumes that they're 'just' girls and just another obstacle in his way.

And then I watch as if in slow motion. I see Takeshi run towards Mitsuha in what seems to be an attempt to bowl her over, but rather than be startled, I watch Mitsuha jump forward, legs bending and angling forward into the shape of a flying kick...

And Takeshi goes flying, sprawling out over the ground, as Mitsuha deftly lands on her feet again. I race forward to catch up, Takeshi is writhing on the ground clutching his face in pain.

The two police officers suddenly appear behind Mitsuha and don't seem to care for Takeshi's pain as they quickly spring forward and violently pulls his hands behind his back and handcuffing him.

The next scenes seem like a blur to me. Tsukasa comes up to me and yells things in my ear, slapping my back in excitement. I'm grabbing Mitsuha in excitement. The policemen look concerned and smug at the same time.

A number of people are pushed along outside with their hands handcuffed behind their backs, police fill the scene with lights flashing. We walk forward examining the faces of each person, with Sakaka, Mitsuha and I all identifying them as people we had seen. The former 'psychic' person is there too, his face gaunt and pale as he saw us "I foresaw this…" he mumbles. They are placed in the back of the real marked police vans.

Other vans fill the scene too, people with cameras come out, news reporters whose face I recognise from TV come out.

Cameramen come up to us, Mitsuha and I are put in front of the camera. A man who called himself the police commissioner shakes my hand,

"Although we can't condone your conduct we are extremely impressed with your fast actions," he says half to us, half to the cameras.

"What was going through your mind?" A reporter asks us,

"Were you scared for safety?" Mitsuha is questioned.

"Are you happy that these people are now arrested?"

Questions are hurled at me, at Mitsuha, at Sakaka and Tsukasa. I have no idea how Mitsuha or I replied the cameras.

All I can remember is grinning a huge smile and replying, "she flying-kicked him straight in the face… and it looked glorious."


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23 - Boy and Girl

The boy and girl look at each other. This was a jungle of another sort. A concrete one with shiny glass that glistened in the metallic sun.

It had been easier getting to Tokyo from Gifu compared to where they previously had to walk from. The travel time was only an hour and a half but it felt like forever for the boy and girl. They paced up and down and decided on categories to think about to kill time; they made a tally of the most popular suit colour (black), decided on which carriage was the most interesting one (the fourth green carriage with the funny white people struggling to open an onigiri) and which carriage smelt the worse (it was a tie between the carriage with the old people and their herbal ointment smell and the teenagers who decided that they could eat their hot KFC instead of a rail bento).

But as the train slowed down and they saw the sign 'Shinagawa' past and they saw 'Tokyo' they knew that they had arrived. But as they stepped outside of the train; just as easily as they felt like they had accomplished the next step in their plans they just as easily felt lost again. The boy looked around him. People in all directions, signs pointing in all directions, platforms and train numbers in all directions. Construction work filled one exit, tall dark mirrored buildings blocked off another exit.

The boy and girl looked at each other. This would be another task that had to be overcome. Where do they go from here? They had been lucky in Gifu, they could easily find addresses there. But this was different. It was too big! Too busy! Too crazy!

The girl thought to herself, 'where would she want to go?'. As she was lost in thought she looked at the boy looking up at the sky scrapers. She looks up too, looking for the Tokyo Skytree just to see the landmarks of Tokyo, hoping that seeing Tokyo landmarks would trigger something. As she turns her head around she notices a building; the Roppongi Hills Mori tower. She knows that tower from somewhere! A sense of nostalgia washes over her.

The girl pulls the boys hands sharply. She points at the tower with the other hand and urges him to follow her as she starts to run in that direction. She just knows that that's the right direction. As the girl begins to take off, she feels a sudden tug on her arm. The boy doesn't seem to be following her.

The boy looks at her, and points backwards; taking the subway would be far quicker.

The boy walks back into the station and begins to look at subway signs. Sheepishly the girl follows him.


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24: Taki

I have an interview today. It was strange, out of the blue a call to me late last night from one of the big five construction firms. "We would like you to come in and talk about job opportunities."

It would be a good place to work at. I had spoken to people in the industry before; it was like the Google of the construction and architecture world. Good culture, cutting edge innovation.

"That's awesome!" Mitsuha told me, "I'm really happy for you,"

But somehow something felt missing.

Did I, Taki Tachibana, really want to be working there? Would I even get a job? Self doubt, self absorption, self-reflexive thoughts filled my mind.

My mind drifted back to all the events on the past few days. I wonder how much my appearance on TV influenced the recent phone call for an interview. Is it just a marketing move? I had applied to them before but hadn't heard a response from that company. The application deadline had closed long ago and I had just assumed that I wouldn't be receiving a reply. I tried to shake the thought from my mind. That's not something to worry about now; for now I needed to prepare my portfolio, my _rirekusho_ and groom myself to be ready and presentable.

I open my cupboard to pull out my suit. I wonder whether Mitsuha would be the type to think me looking cool in a suit, or lame in a suit. I'm not sure whether I even know whether I think I'm cool or not in a suit. I didn't really get a chance to discuss things properly with Mitsuha too about plans. After the TV and police incident, we somehow only had minor conversations...and nothing about the future. I know she would be going back to Gifu, but she hadn't properly told me yet. Somehow things felt awkward.

"It'd be a great opportunity to get the job right? Haha, maybe I can be scouted too after all that ordeal and be a superstar!" Mitsuha joked with me. "The next stage in your future can start now right?"

I didn't have a response to that. What sort of future did I want?

"I have to fix up a few things tomorrow, but want to catch up in the evening after the interview?" Mitusha told me yesterday, "we can invite Tsukasa and the others too".

I put my suit on. I can worry about Mitsuha later. I had to think about the interview. If I don't have a job, I can park any ideas of a relationship or any sort of socialising.

I open my briefcase, and pull out the pieces of paper I have inside there. I flick through them and see all the designs I had done and mentally check them off as being complete. As I put the files back into the bag, I notice a crumpled piece of paper at the bottom. I pull it out and look at it. It's a landscape. It looked beautiful, a country town in a valley by a lake. It was peaceful and serene. I smooth the piece of paper out and put it with the rest of my portfolio. I have no idea where that drawing came from, but somehow I don't want to throw it out.

I take one last look at the mirror and fix my hair up. One last interview to do, I convince myself as I step outside of my door. It will be good! As I close the door, I look inside the room to make sure it's all properly locked up and clean. I see my breakfast sitting on the sink still that I didn't clean up properly. Perhaps I'll do that first before I go; I feel that being clean and organised is the first step to having a good interview.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25 - Boy and Girl

The boy and girl exit from Roppongi station.

The girl drags the boy's hands leading the way towards the tower excitedly. She points at the spider statue and jumps at at the boy playfully, re-enacting as if she was Shelob in Lord of the Rings. At the tower entrance they sneak past the line queueing to go up, a perk that they grinned about; a Sailor Moon exhibit was showing. The boy shakes his head, the girl nods enthusiastically; it was her childhood.

As they wait inside the elevator, the boy wonders; this feels more like a date than looking for a purpose.

The elevator beeps and they get out. The girl spills out and pull the boy through. Through the Sailor Moon exhibit, onto the observation windows. The girl is excited by how large Tokyo is. The boy thinks about how grey tokyo is.

They go around, and then around again. Perhaps they were distracted by the view and didn't notice faces properly. Smiling couples, excited school girls, enthusiastic tourists. The girl's face is falling. It was meant to be right! _They_ should be here! She had a premonition or feeling!

They look around at the surrounds; Tokyo is so large...

The boy looks at the girl's disappointed face. He notices the cafe in front of them .He motions to her and she follows him inside. It would be good to sit down to think.

They sit at a table and wistfully know that they can't order a cake or parfait from the menu. The boy and girl sit silently at the table. As they wait there, they notice the TV hanging in the corner of the room.

Another meteorite hitting Japan, another politician doing something inappropriate, another TV personality visiting a local town to try out local cuisine for an obscure festival. And then they notice two people on TV that they recognise. The boy points at the TV. The girl points at the TV; that's them! Excited they hug each other they have a lead to follow!

Excitedly they rush to the elevators to leave they don't even follow the end of the broadcast. Back to the station and cramming into the subway to the Yoyogi park station.

They sneak past the security point effortlessly and to the production studio. One drawer, second drawer, and they find it. They really should start careers as detectives with the amount of digging through files that they've done in the past few days and their success rate was pretty out of this world. Out of the news article file they find the production notes and the consent forms for what they had just watched;

 _Tachibana Taki, Miyamizu Mitsuha._

The girl and boy looks at each other. This was it. The girl and boy hug each other, emotionally jumping up and down. When they calm down they look at each other. They would separate here. Behind each name was an address and contact details on where those people were located.

This last leg of the journey they would have to make alone.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Mitsuha

Today will officially be the last day of my glamorous Tokyo work-life… If you call part-time work 'glamorous'. That life is over at least for now; I don't think I've given up on my Tokyo dream, but somehow the weight of reality seems to be heavier on my shoulders to the extent that I can't ignore it anymore.

I told my boss last night that I had to go back to Gifu to take care of my family.

"When do you have to leave by?" my boss had asked me. She seemed resigned to the fact that I was leaving. I guess you can never rely on casual staff.

"Probably as soon as I can, do I need to provide any notice?" I asked.

"It's ok," she said, "I understand…" she let that last word linger, "How about tomorrow as your last day? There's a customer coming in that I would appreciate your assistance with if that's ok. You can say bye to the rest of the girls then too. You can come in the afternoon if you want, I know you have a few things to sort out in the morning first and it will be the afternoon and evening when I will need you the most."

"Sure, that would much appreciated," I replied. One more day I thought would be good too. Things have happened so quickly that a day of work, or half day would help slow things down and hopefully give me a little bit of closure.

"Somehow, I had a premonition that you would be leaving," she told me, "I actually have something for you…I haven't finished it yet but it'd be better to give it to you now as tomorrow may be difficult… I also don't want the others to know I made this for you."

I was surprised at this gesture. In my year and a half of working there, she had never been the sentimental type. I don't think she had ever given any other staff-member a gift or present too. She went behind to the store room and after a little bit of rustling she came out with a large flat white box, the type we use to store our finished outfits in.

The outfit now stood in my living area on a dress mannequin I have in my room. It was a shrine maiden outfit; red pleated skirt with the white _haori_.

As I look at it again, the sense of nostalgia hits me. When I was younger I had hated that outfit. It was something that I was forced to wear by my grandmother. Now, I don't know. I don't think the sense of dread I once had is the same anymore.

I sighed, I'd need to pack it up though. I still needed to call the removal truck to get my stuff delivered back to Gifu. As much as I wanted to move out of Itomori, packing things up was never a fun thing.

I look back at the shrine maiden outfit. It was still missing a few stitches in the seams and pleats as well as some details. Perhaps when I got to work today, I'd try ask for some more red ribbon so I can finish off the patterning a bit more. It would be fun to make it just like the outfit I wore as a kid. Maybe my grandma would be happy again.

"Somehow I just thought that it suited you," my boss had told me when she gave it to me. It's strange as I don't think I ever told her I was a shrine maiden; she only knew I used to loom things for my grandmother as a kid.

I take the outfit and fold it back inside the box. I needed to get ready for work.

I let out a sigh. I hadn't told Taki that I was going to leave Tokyo yet. I think he somehow suspects something is up though. At least he's got a job opportunity coming up so he can start his career and begin afresh.

It's strange how life throws curveballs at you. You think that something is about to begin and then the door is seemingly closed in front of you. I remember that feeling of being intensely drawn to him when I saw him on that train that week or so ago. He's a good guy though; he'll find a cute girl to make him happy.

I tie my hair up and check my makeup again. Time to leave to work I guess. I look at the instant ramen bowl that I ate for lunch still at my sink. I should clean that up properly I tell myself, I'll need to start a new leaf when I move back to Gifu.

I close the door behind me, the super responsible clean Mitsuha can wait till she gets back here.


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Boy

The boy exits out of the subway. He recognises this neighbourhood. He vaguely remember being here before with his family; there was a family restaurant that they would frequent together here. He looks down at the street gutter searching for the numbers to find his way to his destination.

He was glad that there were at least street numbers easily seen here in Tokyo. From what he understood, after the war rebuilding efforts was so focused on re-building that they had neglected to put street names or numbering for people to find their way around. It's not a busy neighbourhood but he sees a few people walking around.

He finds the right number and walks down the street; looking at each apartment block to read the name.

The boy climbs up the stairs and looks at the name on the door till he finds the right name, 'Tachibana'.

Below him he hears a boy sigh

"Ahh, I'm going to be late!",

The boy turns around to see a familiar shape wearing a suit look at his phone and break into a brisk jog.

The boy reacts, and rushes to the staircase. He races down the steps, out into the walkway and onto the street to see the figure he wants to be chasing disappear around the corner.

The thought crosses the boys mind; if he just waits at the door, the person who he is chasing will eventually return… But he is impatient now. This had to happen now!

The boy runs down the street and turns and looks. He can't see anyone there anymore. Was his _other self_ too fast? Did he make a wrong turn?

The boy takes a gamble; his target has to be going to the train station. If the boy hurries, he may be able to catch up. The boy runs.

From down the street he sees his target descend the stairs. The boy hopes that the train to be caught is delayed.

Down the stairs and over the ticket booth. The boy feels somewhat excited every time he enters the train station without paying.

The boy runs down the stairs to the platform and looks around. The train carriage has arrived.

He sees the figure of the person he has been trying to follow get in a carriage further ahead. The boy doesn't have enough time to make it to that carriage. He gets into the carriage as close as possible just as the doors close.

The boy has to monitor when to get off. The train carriages are all pretty crowded so it is hard to look ahead and keep track of the right stop, but eventually he sees his target standing. The boy's _other self_ looked uncomfortable in their suit.

It was a matter of waiting now. After what felt like an eternity, the train eventually arrives into the centre of Tokyo. An expensive financial district.

The target gets out, and the boy follows. The station is packed and the boy can only follow behind as the throngs of people stand before the boy and the target.

Eventually the boy is led through underground paths into a big building. The target goes inside and looks around before heading off to a corporate looking section. The target speaks to the receptionist and gets motioned along to the some elevators. The elevators are high tech and fancy; all glass that juts over the inside atrium, transporting well dressed people between floors.

The boy follows behind, trying to reach the boy… but somehow falling back a little as if reluctant to properly catch up. The elevator door closes without the boy.

The target goes up, level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4…

The boy looks helplessly upwards, trying to determine which floor the boy gets off at.

The elevator stops at level 5. Then moves up and stops at 6. And finally rests at floor 9 before making the descent back down to the ground.

The boy gets in. He'll start at level 9 and make his way down; going down is easier than up the boy figures, and that way the boy will cover all the floors.

The boy waits for the next elevator and goes up it. The building is spectacular as the boy looks around; greenery surrounds the ground floor which gets natural light in from the top. Vented slats are along the side of the building that lets the building get ventilation in and keep it cool.

The elevator reaches the 9th floor and the boy exits out and looks around. There's a single room in front; with half frosted glass walls for him to see through. Through the walls he sees tables after tables, computer monitors after monitors people busy with their work. The person the boy is looking for is not there.

Much of the same view filled level 6. For the amazing building they were in; work-life looked all the same. Drab and dreary.

Finally the boy reached level 5. And the boy sees who he is looking for.

The _other self_ is sitting on a plush leather couch. This was the meeting room floor it seemed. The target was idly playing with his hands, looking at the magazines on the coffee table in front of him. A copy of the company's history evidently looking less appealing to the target than the target's own hands.

This is the boy's chance. The boy moved towards his target; looking with a sense of mixed sense of apprehension and finality.

"Mr Tachibana?"

Two men approach the boy's target as they walk with purposeful strides. The boy looks startled at this interruption. The boy's other self stood up too.

The boy looked at the scene unfolding, it was now or never.


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28: Taki

"Mr Tachibana?"

A man with dark grey suit, dark blue tie, comes and greets me. He looks like he's almost out of a magazine or one of those stock images you find online or on advertising posters of the stereotypical managerial company man. I stand up.

Next to snazzy corporate man is another person, younger, looking more like a subordinate. I put down the magazine that I was reading and move forward.

I bow deeply, "Tachibana, Taki" I say my name, "it is an honour for you to invite me here".

"I am Yoshida from Daiwa corporation, thankyou for coming to meet us" the well groomed person greets me as he offers me his business card. I take the business card with both hands and dip my head again to read the card.

As I take a look at the card before putting it in my top pocket, my head begins to swirl and a strange feeling washes over me. I can't work out what it is, nausea? I wonder, am I that nervous to be here? But there's something else too...

Nostalgia? But I haven't been here before, and I don't think I've ever been fond of this stiff interview process before. It's as if some strange sense of deja vu has hit me.

"You don't need to bow for that long" Yoshida says to me chuckling.

I realise that I had been bent over, lost in thought as I was trying to clear my head and work out what this strange feeling I was experiencing was. I stand up, blinking around. I feel weird, all of a sudden these emotions and memory starts flooding into me.

If it's deja vu, is there a lady in a red dress around that I've seen twice now? I think to myself remembering that old sci-fi movie, the Matrix. As my mind thinks about ladies in red dresses, my mind thinks about Mitsuha, I remember her in her school uniform with her red hair tie holding up her hair.

Hang on school uniform? I think to myself, have I seen Mitsuha in a school uniform before?

But before I can process what's going on, a voice intrudes my thoughts, "If you would please follow us, we'll just go into a meeting room," Mr Yoshida directs me.

I follow behind them walking slowly as my mind begins to clear a little.

What's happening? I wonder to myself as I am whisked away down the walkway to a meeting room. Perhaps I saw a picture of Mitsuha when I went down to Gifu; that must be it, I tell myself.

I enter a room, it's in the corner with glass panels surrounding the room. A view over Tokyo bay greets the room. Beautiful... if I wasn't viewing it from a concrete corporate tower. Inside the meeting room, there are two other people inside there already. They all have well groomed suits. Yoshida and his associate walks around with them to sit down.

I rub my head.

"Headache? Haha I still feel a bit tired from my _nomikai_ last night" one of the interviewers who was already sitting spoke out, chuckling to himself.

"Please take a seat, and thank you for coming in to see us," the other seated person says.

"So as you know we are looking for a candidate to join our team and we were wondering whether you may be the right fit for us."

More voices swarm my way. I can't remember half my responses now as my head feels so heavy.

"We're very busy these days with construction work as all these meteorites are creating more work for us. Thank God for disasters right? Haha"

Suddenly flashes of Itomori fills my head. I see the comet Tiamat hitting the town. I see the town being evacuated. I see the crater at the Miyamizu shrine.

"I guess before we go further, how about you tell us about yourself Taki?".

I feel my face become flushed and my eyes become wet. The image of Mitsuha comes to my mind again; a young Mitsuha, an older Mitsuha, a beautiful Mitsuha.

"I'm sorry," I say, "I can't be here".

Without looking back, I stand up. I don't look back to see the interviewers looking confused and agape at me.

I walk out the door and head to the elevators; it takes too long to walk there! I break into a job racing to hit the elevator button. Still too slow. I don't have time to wait for this elevator!

I turn around and see the stairwell; I turn and bolt, dropping my portfolio papers all on the ground. Down the stairs, out the door. I want to run all the way to see Mitsuha but that'd take longer. I don't even think to pause to think that Mitsuha is heading to her work soon.

I run to the subway, tap my Suica and race to the platform to board the train.


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29: Mitsuha

I step outside my door, locking it. Ready for one last day of work. I still have time before I get to work, but I thought that I'd be better to get in as early as possible so I can help clean my stuff properly. I also want to grab some more red string so I can finish off the shrine outfit.

As I lock the door to my apartment I feel a strange sense of nausea. I bend over, trying to clear this feeling. I know I'm emotional about having to leave back to Gifu, but I didn't realise I was _that_ affected. It's such a strange feeling, as if I've experienced several days all at once.

Anyways, I shake my head, I must get to work. Last day today, I have to try my hardest. At least I can get a good reference from the boss then if I finish well. I step down the walkway, and my legs feel heavy. I guess all the excitement of the past few days have affected me.

I walk down my apartment stairs and make my way to the subway. I look at my phone to check the time. Taki must be doing his interview about now. I somewhat hope it goes well, and goes badly… If he gets a new job, he'll have less time… and somehow deep down inside I want him to keep giving me attention, not his new job… I'm being selfish though, he's been so good to me. Ever since high school he's been a sense of stability for me, keeping me sane when I felt like I was going crazy from all the stuff that happened with my family. I think about Taki, he has done so much for me, and for the town too as I reflect on seeing his concerned face on top of the crater.

I tap my card on to go to the station, and pause. How did I remember my highschool days with Taki? When did I see Taki...

Before I can think further, I notice the station sign with the train times display my train; I need to hurry to catch it, it's arriving in a minute.

I break into a brisk walk, carefully tottering along so as to not twist my foot in short heels so that I can still make my train. I sit down on a double seat, and sit by the window as I look out. Tokyo is relatively pretty when you think about it, there's so much out there. But Tokyo is also really scary, a concrete jungle with so many people going about their lives.

I pull out my phone, should I message Taki to see how he went? I should leave a message in his phone like old-time sake. I wonder if he… I freeze, how did I forget that that happened?

What has happened in the last few days? How did I not remember Taki?!

I feel my face becoming flush as memories and emotions start flooding back. I look out the window, looking to see something. Looking for something that will make sense to all this crazy stuff that had been happening… I don't know what, and then..

And then I see his face.

And I know that he sees me.

I get up off my seat and rush to the doors; what's the next station? Yotsuya-san-chome.

As the train pulls to a stop, I bolt outside. I fly up the stairs, sprinting over the overpass. I laugh to myself as I run, Taki must have run this exact route before. Somehow my previous worries of wearing heels has evaporated into wild abandon.

He better remember me this time.

I sprint towards the Suga Shrine, wiping tears from my eyes as I run. I don't think I've ever run so hard in heels before.

And then I approach the shrine and the stairs.

Taki is standing there grinning madly at me. My heart feels like it's going to explode.

I slowly walk up the stairs, still crying and wiping my face. My makeup must be all smudged now and I must look terrible, but I can't control myself.

Taki slowly descends the stairs, tears falling down his cheeks. We speak at the same time,

"My name is Mitsuha Miyamizu,"

"My name is Taki Tachiba,"

"And I love you."

~FIN~

An epilogue chapter will also be posted!


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